The Shortest Life
by ErtheChilde
Summary: The Doctor never intended to survive the loss of his people and planet, but when did things ever go according to plan in his long life? Just the same, he never intended for Rose Tyler to be more than just a temporary companion. Time, as always, seemed to have a different idea.
1. Prologue

_**The Shortest Life  
**__**by ErtheChilde**_

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**Disclaimer:  
**This story utilizes characters, situations and premises that are copyright the BBC. No infringement on their respective copyrights is intended by the author in any way, shape or form. This fan oriented story is written solely for the author's own amusement and the entertainment of the readers. It is not for profit. Any resemblance to real organizations, institutions, products or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All fiction, plot and Original Characters with the exception of those introduced in the books and graphic novels, are the sole creation of ErtheChilde and using them without permission is considered rude, in bad-taste and will reflect seriously on your credibility as a writer. There may or may not be a curse in your future as well, so be warned. Remembered all things come in threes, good and bad. Plagiarizing is considered bad.

**Warning:  
**General spoilers for most seasons and novelizations (mostly New Who 1 - 4), and I don't have a beta at the mo', so please bear with me on any errors. I edit as I go.

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"_Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change."_

_- Thomas Hardy_

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**PROLOGUE**

The first breath was as excruciating as it was a surprise.

Hauled out of the swirling, pitch black darkness of his mind, the Doctor felt as though he was choking on solidified carbon dioxide. Noxious smoke lingered in the air, swamping his windpipe and lungs in a way that made every inhalation feel as though it was slicing him open from the inside. He could taste blood on his tongue, but it was little more than an aftertaste; the inner recesses of his mouth seemed dry as sandpaper and unfamiliar in shape.

He was trapped, somewhere between sleeping and waking, and knew that the sickness had fallen upon him. This latest regeneration had been volatile, so much so that even if he had wanted to escape the pain of it and slip into a healing coma, he couldn't summon the energy.

Everything that surrounded him was darkness. He could smell something like burning flesh, but when he tried to open his eyes to identify it, they were weighed down by exhaustion and a phantom pain he had no comparison for. It was the same ache that suffused his entire body.

He groaned, the action sending an excruciating vibration through his damaged esophagus. For several seconds, he wondered if his hearing had been damaged somehow. There was an inexplicably vast, echoing quiet that enclosed him, making the darkness of his mind seem even more sinister.

It was only when he realized that he could still hear the various creaks and whirs of his ship that he understood the terrible truth.

He wasn't deaf; there was just no one left for him to hear.

As memories rushed back to him, he let out an agonized cry of comprehension; his ears heard the guttural sound of a wounded animal.

Gallifrey was gone, and the Time Lords with it.

He had killed his own people – wiped out a lush, thriving collection of minds and destroyed his planet – with the push of a button. There had been a silent flash, like an exploding star and then millions of minds were silenced, forever, in a blast that had reverberated through the universe, obliterating other planets, systems and galaxies.

Even now he could feel the aftershocks rippling deep into the past and far into the future. His lonely mind heard the echo of countless paths to parallel worlds shutting off, imagined entire realities being cannibalized by Reapers who sought to sterilize the continuity gaps that resulted. History and actuality wavered, now free of those who had guided it, now destined to move in constant flux like threads flying in the wind.

Flashes of reality and dreams flickered on the backs of his eyelids, jumbled together in a way that made no sense.

Images of the interior of his ship, its wooden panelling now blackened and charred beyond recognition. A pale woman in an old-fashioned dress, singing to him with the voice of the TARDIS. Orange sky, bathing the silver trees with light as it was incinerated. Something moving in the distance, an animal of some kind, its canine features twisted into a wicked snarl. The floor of the control room broken and covered with dirt, grime and blood. A field of roses, their pink and yellow hues a painful contradiction of peace to his war-torn mind. The stench of the fires and the burn of death all around him.

The disorder was like a physical brand, and he cried out again in wordless agony.

The TARDIS tried to sooth him. His third heart sang to him, calm and quiet, but even her melody was discordant and agonizingly labored. Grief over her own loss bled through their connection – he wasn't the only one to lose his entire species today.

Even worse than the confounding images was the return of memories. He watched them unfold over and over again, the terrible things he had done, both before and after he learned of what the Time Lords had planned.

He felt, deep within himself, the parts of himself he had been forced to kill for the sake of the universe. He saw the systems and planets and galaxies that he had had been required to choose between, the forced arbitrator of fate to decide which would survive and which would rot as collateral damage. Some had survived for the simple, selfish reason that he had liked them better than others.

The Earth endured because of his love for it. Perhaps something in him must have suspected he might live, had hoped to ensure at least one planet that he had an inborn connection to might survive.

That knowledge was brought up short by one question that echoed over and over in his mind.

Why?

He hadn't meant to survive this. One of the critical factors in his decision to end the War had been the knowledge that he wouldn't be able to live through the endeavor. After all, what kind of creature chose to be the last of its kind? More to the point, what kind of creature chose to live with blood of its own on its hands?

He remembered using the Moment, the burning sensation he imagined re-entry must feel like and the wave of energy that had thrown him clear across the console room of his ship. He remembered the wooden beam punching through him, crushing both of his hearts and feeling relieved before the world went dark.

Relieved that it was over.

There was no possible way he should have survived and yet he had.

His perceptions remained disordered, a consequence of the regeneration energy not having settled yet. He also had a feeling that the senses that remained to him were trying to compensate for the sudden silence where his people had once been.

He didn't even attempt to access his time sense, knowing the pain of poking that mental abscess would be more unbearable than his physical wounds.

If he had known survival was even a possibility, he would have purposefully fought back the regeneration to ensure he did die.

The silence beyond his chaotic thoughts grated on him.

Perhaps it was not too late. Perhaps he still had it in him to will his death.

"My sister will not yet receive you, my Champion," a voice at once like swirling sand and dying leaves whispered to him. "Death can be your gift another day."

He was startled, but couldn't move to show it. Once again he tried to open his eyes, but to no avail; on the periphery of his vision he pictured a faceless figure in a robe of shifting grey silk.

'Time,' he thought, unable to bring the words to his lips.

He imagined something soft brushing against his face, a caress that brought with it little relief. The Eternal whispered his name – the name he had long since pretended to have forgotten – soothingly, the tones mingling with the TARDIS' song in the background. "My Lonely God…my Doctor…I am sorry for this burden that falls to you…"

'It was you,' he thought bitterly. 'You made sure I regenerated.'

"Yes.'

'Why? I was ready to die. I was _meant_ to die in the War.'

There was a pause as the TARDIS gave a keening wail of denial and reproach, and the image in his head of the snarling wolf became more focussed.

"Can you feel it?" the Eternal murmured. "The aimlessness of the universe?"

Even as she spoke, the Doctor felt the swirling eddies of time, the endless dance of all there was and all there had been and all that ever could be. It seized upon him, insurmountable and crushing in a way he had never experienced before.

"With no on to safeguard it, its end threatens to become a fixed point."

He could sense that moment, a timeline thwacking abruptly into place with the same discordant quality of a harp string being played out of tune. 'Event Two…there was no sure time before…'

"Without the Time Lords, this reality hurtles toward destruction all the faster," the Eternal granted. "And so I saved one."

'One,' he repeated, stunned at first and then angry when his broken mind realized she was speaking of him. 'One?! What good will that do? That'll be about as effective as an ant against a tidal wave!'

"It was the only measure I could take," Time answered, sounding apologetic for an entity that lacked the ability to produce true emotional inflection. "If my interference was discovered, those truly responsible for your War would hasten the universe's end all the quicker."

'Truly responsible?' the Doctor repeated in disbelief. 'Not much more complicated than the total mutual destruction of the Daleks and the Time Lords.'

"The Time War was something far beyond the reach of this universe," the Eternal said. "You did what you had to in order to save it, because you knew what the High President was planning. But do you know why?'

'Speaking in riddles is usually my affectation,' he thought discourteously.

"Do you know where he came by the idea?"

'I would imagine it was something he figured out in his abundant spare time.'

"The plan was not of Ephemeral origin," Time told him. "It came from beyond him, from something that sought the destruction of the Time Lords by their own hands. Something which would set the destruction of this universe in motion and feed of the eventual explosion of entropy. It is why they will not take it yet and why I intervened."

'And what's the point of that, I wonder?' he thought furiously. 'Say the universe is preserved a little longer. Doesn't that just give your mysterious 'They' more to consume when it finally does die?"

"It gives me additional flexibility to combat them," Time answered, voice going low and dangerous. "This is _my_ universe. I will not have it taken from me."

'You of all beings should know that everything dies,' he pointed out.

Again he felt a soft caress against his face. "Yes, my Champion – everything dies. All things come to dust in the end. But that dust will one day be shaped and built into the foundations of something else. The never-ending cycle. And this one will no longer have that opportunity if it is not protected."'

'Why should I even care?' the Doctor wanted to know. 'After what I've done…?' Anger rose up within him again and he channelled it directly at the infuriatingly calm Eternal. 'Out of everyone out there – paragons of virtue and knowledge, heroes among my people – there were better men than me that you could have saved for this task!'

"No, there wasn't. There was only you.'

'That's a lie! You have all of time at your disposal, governance over life – you could pull them out of time before the Moment! You could save –'

"I could only save one," Time retorted firmly. "Any more would risk more damage to the timelines than has already been wrought. And I could only save you…because you are my Champion."

He felt as though his throat had closed up at that. How many times was that dubious honor going to return to haunt him? To know that it meant he would go on living while others more deserving were consigned to death or an eternity locked in time?

'Then I relinquish the title,' he thought, the words a bare whisper in his mind. 'I will no longer be your Champion.'

There was a long pause. In the fevered dream induced by the regeneration, he imagined the wind flitting through the field of roses and a mournful sigh from the figure beside him.

"My poor Lonely God," she whispered, contrite, "I would release you from my service if you truly wished it…but she chose you. And even a being so vast as myself is bound by something. And I am bound to her, as you are, in every life."

'Who is 'she'?' he demanded. 'Your sister Death?'

"No. Both my siblings hold a different kind of claim upon you than that of a Champion – no, the one of whom I speak will shape your future."

'Future,' he thought contemptuously. 'How can I possibly have a future? I should be dead. I wish I was dead.'

There was another lengthy pause, and he had the sense that Time was studying him like a particularly obscure, ancient text. She sighed again, the same mournful sound as before and yet he felt no pity for her.

"If that is your decision…" she began, thoughtful, "then perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is time for this universe to expire. Perhaps I have adopted the mortal peculiarity of selfishness." He felt ice cold hands take his aching face between them. "If you truly wish it, I will leave you to your fate. You have served me well, and if oblivion is what you seek, I will step aside. But I would ask one last thing of you first."

'Only one more?' he sneered. 'What more could you possibly want from me?'

"To show you. To show you a glimpse of what you would have if you lived."

'I'm not interested. I don't deserve anything, least of all a reward,' he told her bitterly. The idea of being rewarded in any way for committing genocide made his stomach rebel against him and the bile rise in his throat.

"It is not a reward that I would show you, but a chance at redemption."

His thoughts ground to a halt at that. He knew deep in his hearts that there was no way to make up for the life he had led and the final atrocity he had carried out. There would never be a way to make up for those lives, even if the alternative would have been exponentially worse. Death was the only solution he could see to escape his sins, and yet…

'Show me, if you must,' he managed.

He felt feather soft touches at his temples and then his mind was deluged with images and emotions. They were mere flickers, never distinct or complete, but somehow they were all strong enough to push back the blackened thoughts of the War.

"_Run!"_

– _He reached out, grabbing hold of a small, soft hand and was surprised at the strength with which it grasped him back – _

"_There's me," a soft, sincere voice said._

– _Surrounded by the musty smell of dust and death, he felt his hearts swell – _

"_We'll go down fighting, yeah?"_

"_Yeah."_

"_Together?"_

"_Yeah."_

"_I'm so glad I met you."_

"_Me too."_

– _He was once again responsible for the fate of the many at the cost of the one – _

"_If I don't dare, everyone dies."_

"_Do it."_

"_You don't even know what it is. You'd just let me?"_

"_Yeah."_

– _Concrete walls were moving in on him and the smell of his enemy's burning flesh filled the air – _

"_Feels like there's no one."_

"_Well then, good thing I'm not going anywhere."_

"_Yeah."_

– _A Reaper shrieked in the distance – _

"_I wasn't really going to leave you on your own."_

"_I know."_

"_But between you and me, I haven't got a plan. No idea. No way out."_

"_You'll think of something."_

– _Surrounded by darkness and swirling golden sparks – _

"_Just this once, everybody lives!"_

– _The feeling of ashes still on his fingers, alone again, but she would live and that was all that mattered – _

"_I want you safe, my Doctor."_

–_The brush of lips against his own, the action stolen and yet perfect all the same – _

"_I just want to tell you, you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And do you know what?"_

– _Burning energy and song filling him up, and yet this time he welcomed it – _

"_So was I."_

Rippling golden light blinded him as he came back to himself and his hearts twisted within him. With every passing second the images he had seen became murkier, hiding them from his sight until only the emotions they had brought remained.

He felt tears dried on his face and he glared in the direction of the Eternal, still unable to see her face.

'That's not redemption,' he said weakly. 'That's trading one type of pain for another.'

"Not all is as it seems," Time cautioned. "I will not lie and say your hardships are past – along that particular path lies heartache and loss, grief and death and pain…but there will be forgiveness. She will offer you a chance to atone and more."

'And when I inevitably have to choose between her and the universe?'

"I cannot tell you your future, my Champion. Only you will know what path to take."

The Doctor fell silent, his thoughts a chaotic pool of uncertainty and doubt. The pain of the regeneration and guilt for what he had done continued to eat away at him, the parts of himself that he had betrayed stilled called for his death. But deep in his core, to the very heart of himself, the part of him which was still afraid of death and still believed that forgiveness was possible before he ended his life for good endured.

It was this part of him which prompted him to speak.

"I'll do it," he croaked.

As he opened his eyes, the dream faded to nothing and Time had vanished.

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TBC

Reviews and concrit are always appreciated!


	2. Chapter One: A Place Like This

_**The Shortest Life  
by ErtheChilde**_

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"_Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change."_

_- Thomas Hardy_

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**AN: **Just a general note on accents...I am not a native of the UK, and although I've a pretty good ear for accents and a passing interest in dialectology, writing them out in dialogue would make things a bit messy and unorganized. So, a general rule I'm going to follow is that when writing in a certain point of view, that person doesn't have an accent ('cos who has an accent in their own head, anyway?). When the character isn't in p.o.v, mode, I'll do the minimum. So outside of the Doctor occasionally dropping "endin's and 'h's", I'm not going to be putting too much effort into his lovely Mancunian accent. Likewise for Rose later on, outside a bit of th-fronting, don't go looking for an in-depth transcription of the Estuary dialect.

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**ONE**

She had said 'no'.

The Doctor leaned against the center console of the TARDIS, his head bowed and face pulled into a thoughtful frown.

There was no reason to still be thinking about it. Rose Tyler wouldn't be the first potential companion to turn him down, nor would she be the last. At this point in the routine, he should be pushing the matter to the back of his mind.

Moving on.

When someone preferred their safe little uninterrupted lifestyle of sleeping and watching telly instead of taking a life of adventure, it was nothing to him. Why should he waste his time replaying the incident over and over again, hoping for something that obviously wasn't going to happen?

Except he knew she had wanted to say 'yes'. That much had been clear from the conflicted look in her eyes when she turned him down. She had positively sparked with interest upon hearing that his life was always as dangerous as their recent run-in with the Nestene Consciousness.

He had thought she would jump at the chance.

But when she had looked down at the idiot boyfriend clinging to her waist like a child, her shoulders had slumped and he had seen resignation there.

He had known then that Rose Tyler was someone who would put aside her own dreams and happiness for the sake of another.

He didn't know what he was more upset over – the fact that he wasn't that 'other' or the fact that he had broken down and invited her in the first place.

The invitation had slipped from him against his better judgement. He wasn't sure what he had been thinking – after all, what would a vibrant, smart human child such as Rose Tyler want to do with a damaged, dangerous old codger like him?

'An _ugly_, damaged and dangerous old codger,' he added thoughtfully, wincing at the memory of his face in her flat mirror. 'All ears and nose.'

He had been avoiding looking at himself since the regeneration took place and it seemed as if his caution had been wise. Even old Teeth-and-Curls hadn't been as unfortunate looking as this incarnation.

Not that his looks really mattered to him at the end of the day – awful lot of important things to think about other than whether one's face was off-centre – but knowing how superficial humans could be, he supposed he could understand a young woman from Rose's time being put off by being seen with someone like him.

Didn't make him feel any better.

But then…she had been the one to haul him into her flat, hadn't she? She'd followed him down the block yelling questions at him, pursuing him despite his verbal and tacit entreaties to stay away from him.

'Figuratively and literally,' he thought at the memories of her grabbing his arm while she interrogated him over living plastic and aliens, clutching his hand as they ran toward danger and embracing him in the wake of destroying the Nestene Consciousness.

He hadn't had any real physical contact with anyone else since…well.

But Rose had given it without question, without thought, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

He shouldn't be this caught up over something so trivial. His people had always eschewed physical contact for good reason.

It shouldn't have meant anything to him.

And yet, he couldn't help going back to that moment when he had rescued her from the shop basement. He had grabbed her hand and instead of letting herself just be hauled along for the ride, _she had grabbed back_.

Distracted, the Doctor pulled the levers and pushed the buttons needed to leave the Vortex. He set the ship on 'random', willing her to find him a place where he could regain his thoughts and composure. Preferably without the subject of a certain Southeast blond coming up.

And yet the thoughts stubbornly kept coming.

Ever since the War, he had been expecting each new adventure to be his last – and been constantly surprised by his continued survival. Except this time, for the first time that he could remember in a long time, he hadn't wanted to die.

Being around her, he had been able to forget.

The influx of guilt and memories and pain that had plagued him since he woke up (and he still couldn't remember a lot from that last regeneration) had dulled to a negligible background noise while she stood there, demanding answers and taking him to task for mundane things like forgetting about the boyfriend.

Of course he had invited her along.

'And what did I get?' he thought contemptuously.

His offer, thrown back in his face.

Oh, sure, she hadn't really said 'no', but she'd stayed with the pathetic lump that'd been stupid enough to be copied by Autons.

Maybe if said lump hadn't been around, maybe if he hadn't made it, she would have said yes when the Doctor asked? After all, despite being upset the first time she thought the boy was dead, it hadn't been the crippling grief of losing one's mate…

The Doctor scowled and shook his head as if to clear it. That was unfair, and frankly beneath him. He was putting far too much thought into this, and it was leading him to inane conclusions. Time to put a stop to it.

'No reason to linger on might-haves and could-have-beens,' he decided with false cheer. 'Best put her behind us and move on.'

Keep moving, keep running. It didn't matter that he was sure she would have been brilliant at this life – all inquisitive and brave and brimming with potential. No, better she stay safe and boring in her mundane little day-today and let him keep going.

Alone.

The sound of the TARDIS rematerializing gave him new incentive to store the thoughts way.

'New adventure, new danger…new Doctor,' he thought firmly.

He squinted down at the monitor, surprised to see that he was still on Earth – still in the exact same location as before, actually. According to the TARDIS's database of lunar and stellar charts, the time was the only thing that had changed.

Given the probability and the size of the universe, he should be anywhere _but_ here right now.

"What are you on about?" he groused at the TARDIS. "There's nothing interesting in –" He squinted at the charts again, "–1998. Nowt but the Zarya Module launch, and that's in Russia and it would've already happened by now."

His scolding tone was more to hide his dismay that he had once again landed in the wrong location. Ever since the War, the TARDIS' navigational capabilities had been faulty. He preferred to think of the problem as her being stubborn rather than the fact he needed to fix something with parts that no longer existed.

The TARDIS gave a sound suspiciously like a snort and an admonition to get his arse outside.

He glowered and then huffed, "Well, end of the twentieth century – bound to have one or two decent parts' stores about. As if it'd fix your cheek, though...'

He didn't get a response at that, which meant she was ignoring him. Did that a lot lately, now that he thought of it.

Stepping out of the TARDIS, he found himself in the same alley he had left not ten minutes before.

Empty, right now, but still with the same smell of garbage and wet pavement. Graying, wet snow had accumulated in some parts of it, and he could hear the night traffic off the main road. From the hubbub of London's nightlife and the faint ring of holiday music in the night air, it wasn't too difficult to discern when he was.

"Oh no, not happening," he declared, turning on his heel and heading back to the ship. "There's no way I'm sticking around for –" He pulled at the door, only to find it shut and locked tightly against him. "What the hell are you doing? I'm not staying! We're gonna go find ourselves a nice dictatorship to overthrow or a weapons factory to destroy and – _would – you – open – this – door_?!"

The TARDIS only hummed at him with smug superiority that told him he wouldn't be getting back inside for the foreseeable future.

"Fine!" he snapped, knowing better than to try to push things when she got into this mood. If he wasn't careful, she might decide to strand him in this primitive decade longer than just a few hours. And considering this was the time period before nanotechnology and when musical tastes leaned toward groups like the Spice Girls, he couldn't leave it soon enough.

Shoving his hands in his pockets, he stalked out of the alley and out onto the main street, dodging passersby doing their Christmas shopping as he went. He didn't stop to apologize to those he bumped into, not in the mood for interacting with stupid humans. If the TARDIS really thought he needed to be around people, she would have set him down in the Doris Lethbridge-Stewart's back garden and not left him to his own devices. Considering the Brigadier's residence was at least half an hour off, obviously the ship's motive wasn't some convoluted scheme to cheer him up with company.

No, it would just be best to wander around until he stumbled into whatever it was she thought he needed to see or find.

'Meddlesome old box,' he thought, half-annoyed and half-affectionate as he started toward the riverside. He realized with a start as he was halfway there that he was headed to the as-yet unfinished London Eye.

The same structure Rose Tyler had pointed out to him when he had been looking for the Auton's lair.

'Lucky guess, that. I would have found it on my own eventually,' he thought with a scowl as he wandered along a darkened promenade. That scowl grew darker when he realized he was still thinking on the girl. 'So much for getting her out of my head.'

Perhaps he ought to take a trip to her future and see her once she inevitably married the idiot and had a couple of children. Maybe she'd turn out to be like that harridan of a mother he had had the misfortune of a minute's acquaintance with; that'd cure his speculations at any rate…

He was so lost in thought that he didn't see the woman in front of him until he had bumped straight into her.

They both staggered and he got an impression of dark hair and dark eyes before she spoke in a low and dusky American accent, "Sorry, man. I'm a total klutz."

"S'alright," he avowed gruffly. "No harm done –" His words died in his throat at the sudden eddying feeling in his blood. There was an acrid, sickly sweet aftertaste like pears in his mouth and he narrowed his eyes at the woman, vision already blurring. "Ah. Time-Release Tri-Species Tranquilization Dart. Clever."

"Sexy and smart," she purred at him as he fell to his knees. "Oh, we're gonna have _so_ much fun together…"

The world went dark.

~*~ΘΣ~*~

Rose Tyler stumbled forward, her head spinning.

The familiar sensation of her stomach attempting to catch up to the rest of her body filled her senses. Right on cue, needle-like stabs of pain started in her joints, radiating outwards until her entire body stung feebly.

The Torchwood scientists likened the process to a mild form of nitrogen necrosis, a side effect of her body attempting to compensate for the different atmospheric pressures between starting and end points. Irritating, but not fatal.

Even if it had been, it wouldn't have stopped her from making the jumps.

Once her vision cleared, she assessed her immediate situation, taking in the underpass where she had materialized. It was quiet here, aside from the faint hum of the dimension cannon as it cooled down and went into recovery mode.

Concrete and pipes overhead and the sound of traffic in the distance – the bridge she was under was obviously not a high traffic area. She could tell right away that she had come out in the right universe, a fact she knew from the way the air tasted. She'd learned in her travels that you didn't forget the atmosphere you had spent the first nineteen years of your life in.

Still, best to check.

Satisfied that she was alone, she let herself fall back against a graffitied bit of concrete to recover and dug into the pocket of her leather jacket. Loitering about wasn't a luxury she could always afford, her landing sites sometimes necessitating the use of the small .38 snub nose revolver concealed in her waist band. She hadn't wanted to carry the firearm, but experience and Torchwood policy had necessitated it.

'Saved my life a few times,' she admitted grudgingly, feeling absurdly like she was defending herself to the absent Doctor.

She sighed, wondering not for the first time since commencing this crazy cross-dimensional search what he would think when he saw her again.

She didn't feel anything like the girl that had been trapped on a beach so many years before, however much she might still resemble her.

She was thinner now, used to going days without food, and more muscular thanks to the Torchwood training regimen. Lack of sleep because of work or insomnia had given her almost permanent dark circles under her eyes, making her look and feel at least ten years older than she was. Other than her favorite hoop earrings, she wasn't dressed the way she would have once. The youthful and colorful look of a teenager was long gone. Instead, she was dressed casually and practically – dark blue leather jacket, dark jeans and heavy boots. She'd chosen the look partially for comfort and blending-in, as well as nostalgia for him.

'But which him is here?' she thought as she hauled out her battered Nokia and switched it on.

The superphone was a legacy of her first Doctor and had been a vital piece in the building of the original dimensional cannon, according to Mickey Smith. Nowadays she used it to pinpoint her landing locations, turning it on to figure out when she had landed. In the case of landing within the realm of human technology, she got a date; if she landed anywhere else, the phone was programmed to scan constellations.

Even more importantly, it acted a bit as a locator. Although it was useless to her in locating her Doctor because she was outside of her own timeline, it would connect her to whichever incarnation of the Doctor was present.

'December twenty-fourth, 1998,' she mused when the screen came up. 'Now I know he's around here somewhere. He's always up to something on Christmas."

She pulled up the TARDIS number and dialed out, waiting for it to connect. When it did, she held back a cheer – this was a second confirmation that she was in the right world. If she weren't, it wouldn't even dial out.

Holding her breath, she waited for him to pick up, feeling a nervous hope in the pit of her stomach. She had gotten to hear the voices of several Doctors throughout her travels, occasionally including a familiar Northern burr that had her hanging up in shock.

This time, to both her disappointment and relief, there was no answer. She would have to move on to the next step in her process.

She hauled the dimension cannon around by the strap, examining the small readout screen in front of her. It would be another thirty minutes before she could key in another jump, but the device would still be able to give her some information. It was able to measure timelines and lock onto the Vortex distortion caused by the TARDIS; if the timeship was nearby, she could go straight to it.

She would never find out if the cannon did manage to lock on to the TARDIS signature, because she abruptly found herself paralyzed by some kind of stasis field.

"Now _that _is a piece of beauty," a jaunty, polished voice enunciated from behind her. "The device, I mean. Though, you're no slouch in the looks department, either."

Rose fought down panic at her inability to move as the newcomer walked around her, considering her with dark eyes. He was young looking, all spikey bleach blond hair, piercings and painted fingernails; he also sported a dark goatee that reminded her a little too much of Jimmy Stone. This one spoke like an Oxford man, though his clothing suggested he wasn't from anywhere in the vicinity.

A few millennia away from it, she would guess, taking in the waist coat and familiar looking strap at his wrist. She wondered if all Time Agents dressed in period clothing, or if it was just a future fad.

Not that it mattered at the moment, because if she wasn't mistaken, she was in trouble. Unlike the sense of safety she had always felt around a certain ex-Time Agent from the fifty-second century, the aura of this one radiated danger. And not the good kind.

"Thought for a second you were my contact – got all excited too, except you're clearly not a man," the stranger went on, coming to a stop in front of her. He favored her with another lascivious glance, which he then turned to the dimension cannon still grasped in her hand. "Interesting toy, though. May I?"

Even if she had been able to respond, he had already pried the cannon from her stiff fingers.

"Oh, she is a looker!" he exclaimed. "Did you build her? Well, it must have been you. No one in this century would have the know-how. When are you from? Not an Agent, that much I can tell or you wouldn't have been so easy to sneak up on. Trained to expect paralytic pulse frequencies, we are."

Unable to respond in any way, Rose focused as much menace into her gaze as she could. He ignored it, strapping the cannon to his back.

"It's nothing personal," he informed her. "I'm just a bit of a technology re-appropriator. Always a laugh when I stumble onto something like this." He looked at he now, deliberately misreading the panic and anger in her eyes. "Oh, don't worry. I'll give her a lovely new home. Might not even sell her, either, once I figure out exactly what she does. Judging by the design it blows holes in stuff, yeah?" He clasped his hand together. "Oh, it's exciting!"

Rose tried to grit her teeth together, wanting more than anything to get free and take a swing at the bloke.

"And what's this?" he asked, reaching forward to nudge the collar of her jacket to one side. He ran a thumb over the TARDIS key she always wore. "It's giving off almost more temporal energy itself than you do."

He seized it suddenly, grabbing it so roughly that the chain she had been holding it on snapped.

Rose heard a strangled cry of dismay catch in her throat, the idea of losing the last connection she had to the TARDIS terrifying.

To both hers and the thieving stranger's surprise, the key suddenly glowed bright white. He dropped it with a curse, waving his hand in obvious discomfort. "The hell?"

Rose stared at the little metal tool near her right foot. Five years and the key hadn't done anything like that before. Her heart leaped hopefully.

The thief went to pick it up again, but when he reached for it, the key continued to glow angrily. It was so hot that she could field it radiating at her through her jeans.

"Well, fine then," the stranger decided after a few burned fingers. "It's not as interesting as this thing is. I think I'll be having a bit of fun with this toy." He gave a sneering smile and straightened up, pressing an impudent kiss to her lips. "It's been a real pleasure."

Rose made a frustrated, angry noise low in her throat as he laughed and sauntered off, dimension cannon strapped to his back.

It was ten minutes later that the paralytic wore off, and by then Rose knew her chance of finding the thief had fallen to between slim and none.

Letting out a stream of curses that would have made even Jack blush, she bent down to get the now cold key.

'What the hell do I do now?' she thought angrily, glaring in the direction the thief had headed in. 'Gotta get the cannon back, sure, but how?'

Running over possible plans in her head, she started off in the same direction. To her surprise, the key suddenly flared hot in her hand.

She dropped it, watching it bounce and fall a few inches to her left and lose its scalding glow. Scowling at it, she picked up again to find it cool to the touch.

'After all these years it begins to act up?' she thought, annoyed. She started to go in the same direction again, only to have the key grow hot once more. When she jumped backward, it stopped.

For a few seconds she stared at the key, and then with a deliberately slow movement, she tried to move to the right.

The key became too hot to hold in an instant, yet when she took another step back it reverted to cold metal.

'It only wants me going one way,' she realized with a dim sense of wonder and elation. Turning around to, she held the key out in front of her like a compass. It remained nonthreatening as long as she continued going straight. "_Allons-y_, I s'pose…"

~*~ΘΣ~*~

When he came to, the Doctor was sitting in a windowless room with Spartan furnishings and very little light. His wrists were completely immobilized behind him by some kind of cuff; he could hear but not feel the frequent shocks of electricity coming from the band.

'Energy binding technology,' he noted dimly, grimacing at his benumbed limbs. 'Temporarily incapacitates the nerves. Fantastic.'

Even less fantastic was the realization that his coat – and thus the sonic screwdriver – was missing.

"Oh, good, you're finally awake," the throaty female voice said behind him. "I was worried you were going to sleep right through our little get-together. Glad you didn't."

She came around in front of him, looking down at him with a confident yet predatory smile.

The woman was darkly beautiful, with full lips and almond shaped eyes that sized him up with a soldier's calculation and a whore's brazenness. Although she was dressed to fit in with the time period – jeans and a tank top, denim jacket, steel-toed boots and smoky make-up – the anachronistic sword and pocket watch attached to her clothes suggested she was anything but a nineties woman.

As if the technology that restrained him hadn't given her away, there were other clues that she was out of time. The tattoo on her right bicep might have been seen as no more than body modification from someone from this era, but he was familiar enough with fiftieth century epidermal identification methods. The woman had at once point been part of an intergalactic naval crew – before being recruited to the Time Agency, if the wrist-strap hidden beneath her contemporary costume bracelets was any indicator.

'Perfect. As if I haven't run into this lot enough,' he thought with a scowl.

"Can I get you anything before we start?" she asked coyly.

"Now that you mention it, it's a bit nippy," he replied easily. "Haven't seen my jacket, have you?"

"Oh, I've seen it," she grinned at him. "And I got a feeling it'll take me a while to see all of it. You're gonna have to tell me how you make the pockets fit all that stuff in there. Looks useful."

"Can be," he replied candidly. "Not that your brain could possibly understand. Not unless you can think in more than three dimensions."

"Is that an alien equivalent of 'I'll never tell'?" she asked, leaning back against the wall with her arms crossed and a challenging smile on her face.

"Who says I'm alien?"

"Oh, don't play coy, sweetheart, it doesn't fit those pretty blue eyes," she drawled. "You think I didn't scan you the minute I locked on to you? You give off the weirdest temporal signature I've ever seen and you're not human. Not with that binary vascular system and who knows what else you've got two of. Every species I know with biological systems like that are from outside this galaxy. And a lot bigger and usually quadrupeds. So if you can fit all that into a human looking package, your perception filter is either excellent…or you're not from around here." Her gaze hardened. "What are you?"

"I'm…complicated."

"Mm, I'll bet."

He sighed at the unimpressed note to her voice and decided to go with the old interrogation standby of evasions and half-truths.

"Bit of a traveller, me," he said easily. "Heard they had excellent chips on this planet and thought I'd look into it. Don't have anything like that where I'm from – Apalapucia." He seized upon the first time-travelling, binary vascular species he could think of. "Lovely place. About two billion light-years away from here. A little too clean for my tastes, but then I always was the black sheep of the family."

"Apalapucia," the woman repeated dryly, and then snorted. "You're lying."

"'How would you know?" he challenged. "Bet you never even heard of it before now."

She tapped her head temple, where he could just now see the imprint of some kind of shape beneath her skin. "Truth assessor implant. To deal with liars and telepaths that try to hide things from me. Like the fact you are definitely not from Apalapucia."

"Well done," he told her jauntily. "But you wouldn't believe whatever I told you I was even with your little implant. I propose we move to the point in the conversation where you tell me why you've got me tied to a chair, 'cos I'm beginning to worry I've just run into another randy Time Agent with a bondage fetish."

"Who says you haven't?" she countered, and to her credit her eyes only widened a little at the revelation that he knew who she was and who she worked for.

"Well, go on then – impress me," he said, and if his arms had been free who would have crossed them.

"I'll make this really easy so you can keep the lies to a minimum," she told him. "I want the location of your contact. You help me get him, I'll send you back to your place and time with no more than a slap on the wrist and a bit of a memory wipe."

He had no idea what she was talking about, which suggested a case of mistaken identity. That was always fun and usually gave him an idea of what kind of situation he had fallen into. Thus, he decided to play along for a bit.

"Which one?" he asked cheerfully.

"What?"

"Which contact?" her went on. "Been traveling for hundreds of years, me. Met a lot of people. How am I to know who you're looking for?"

"Don't waste my time being cute," she told him, circling around like a vulture. "You know who I'm talking about."

"I really don't," he answered. "If you let me go and we have a quick chat like civilized species', I could probably point you in the right direction, though."

"Until I know what you are, you're not getting out of that chair," she told him as she moved behind him, before leaning down and murmuring softly into his ear, "And if you decide not to help, I get to persuade you until there's nothing left to persuade."

There was an ominous promise in her voice.

"Bit sinister for the Time Agency," he remarked casually.

"To bag this particular piece of crap we're authorized to do whatever's necessary."

"Up to and including torture?"

"And beyond."

"Must be wanted for some serious crimes, then," he mused. "Last time I dealt with you lot it was over an intergalactic war criminal. Even he got a trial. So either this is a personal thing and off the books for you…or he was once one of you and you need to stop him before he does something that can rip apart the fabric of reality." He considered her. "Or both."

There was a crackling sound from behind him and the smell of ions in the air. Likely it was a Taser of some sort. "I'm going to ask you one last time. Politely. And then I'm going to get creative."

"Hopefully more creative than this set-up," he complained. "Looks like you ripped off a cheap mob flick before –" There was a loud buzz and waves of pain cascaded over him, radiating throughout his nervous system. It took him several seconds to recover his breath. "Oh, well done. I'm surprised you got the voltage right on the first try. Most apes wouldn't straight off."

"I figure if you've got two of everything you're supposed to have one of, you can take it," the woman said. "Now tell me what I want to know or we go higher."

"Well, if you feel like interrogating a corpse," he deadpanned. "Have at it."

"I don't know why you're protecting him," she snapped. "He'd sell his own mother twice if he could."

"I'll say it again – haven't the foggiest who you're –"

His words cut off with a strangled cry as another jolt of electricity rippled through him. It seemed he'd been landed with yet another trigger-happy ape that wasn't willing to listen to reason. With his wrists completely immobilized, picking the cuffs would be impossible. Telepathic suggestion was out as well, given that the Agency trained their operative against compulsion – and as strong a telepath as he was, he didn't want to leave the woman a vegetable unless he absolutely had to.

"Last chance," the woman said. "Tell me where you're meeting him or I'll –"

But what she would do he wouldn't find out, because there was a sudden metallic clang and an exhalation, and the woman was suddenly lying on the concrete floor by his chair, a bright red bruise across her temple.

"There you go, gettin' yourself into scrapes again," a familiar voice chuckled, and the Doctor's head turned as far as it could in response. He stared at the last person he would have expected striding into the bland room, casually dropping the fire extinguisher she had used to knock out the Time Agent as she went.

"Rose Tyler," he pronounced, tone laced with wonder, surprise and just a little amusement. He wondered if the electric jolt had scrambled his neurons after all. "What the hell are you doing here?"

ΘΣ

"How d'you think, you daft alien?" Rose replied, hoping her voice sounded cheery instead of forced. "Make a career out of saving your arse, I'd say."

She spared a brief, venomous glance down at the strange woman's still form. She'd caught enough of the tail end of her interrogation of the Doctor to know she was a Time Agent, and if she was in league with the thief who had stolen the dimension canon, she had to stay alive.

For now.

Rose was careful not to meet the Doctor's gaze as she bent to examine the cuffs at his wrists. She needed a minute or two to compose herself before facing this him: the man she had lost and never expected the chance to see again. She knew that if she let him look too closely right now, he would see the darkness of loss reflected in her eyes. He would immediately recognize the pain and grief there, and ask about it.

It had been over five years since she was separated from the Doctor – over six when it came to this particular version of him – but her heart never failed to jump at the sight of him. Admittedly, there had been a few times that the dimension cannon had brought her into this Doctor's path, but she had always been careful to avoid coming into contact with him.

If it weren't for the situation she found herself in right now, she would never have risked crossing timelines.

"No, really, what're you doin' _'ere_," he clarified. "_Now_. In this time. I just left you in an alley in 2005 with your gonk of a boyfriend."

Rose paused, his words echoing slowly in her mind as she processed the ramifications. It hit her at the same moment that she couldn't remember ever having travelled with this Doctor in London at Christmastime. Yet he knew her.

Which left a very small window of time for this event to be taking place.

Suddenly needing a better look at him, she moved around the chair and studied him. A dull ache flared beneath her breast at the familiar big ears and Roman nose; instead of pinstripes and Chucks he was dressed in jeans and the red jumper she had first met him in.

Probably had just met him in.

There was calculation and suspicion in his blue eyes, and from the clench of his jaw, she knew that he was making an even more scrutinizing study of her. She knew what he must be seeing and wondered how it compared to the Rose of his time.

The Rose that she had once been.

"What 'appened to you?" he demanded, still sounding suspicious.

'More than you would believe,' she thought silently, before countering in a warning voice, "Doctor, _when_ are you?"

The question brought him up short, and she could see the moment he made sense of it.

"I think the proper question is, 'when are _you_?'" he retorted. "Judgin' from the fact you're not about twelve years old right now but you know me, I'm gonna assume you're from my future."

"Brilliant deduction, Doctor," she told him dryly as she crossed the room and picked up the jacket she noticed in the corner. She began to rummage around inside it, looking for the sonic screwdriver. "And judging by the fact that you actually know me but are surprised to see me here, _I'm_ gonna guess you haven't gone back to get me yet."

"What d'you mean, 'gone back'?" he demanded. "I never go back. Or ask twice. Barely even ask once."

She shot him a dazzling smile that seemed to throw him off balance for a moment. "You do for me."

He gaped at that and when he couldn't seem to come up with anything to say to that, he scowled and looked around his surroundings. "Where are we?"

"Usually that's my line," she pointed out with a laugh that rang the slightest bit hollow. "A small office building by the docks. Might've been a bank at some point, seeing as the walls are all concrete. I don't think she brought you here to wine and dine you."

He ignored the obviousness of that. "'Ow'd you even find me?"

"TARDIS key," she said cheerfully.

"Where'd you get that?"

"You gave it to me…or will give it to me," she rolled her eyes as she finally managed to find the sonic in his coat. Luckily the Time Agent hadn't managed to find it and remove it. "Never knew it could lock onto your signal like this, though."

"It doesn't," the Doctor told her blankly. "S'not meant to find _me_, s'meant to find the _TARDIS_."

"Well, she's a clever ship," Rose shrugged as she crossed the room, screwdriver clutched in hand. "Maybe she knew I needed help finding…you."

She cursed the hesitation in her voice over the slight lie. He wasn't the Doctor she had been hoping to return to, but he couldn't know that. He also couldn't know that she had known he wasn't her proper Doctor before stopping the Time Agent from zapping him again. She really wasn't in the mood for a lecture, even from this incarnation.

Especially not from this incarnation.

"What'choo think you're doin' with that?" he demanded as Rose pointed the sonic at his wrists. Probably expected her to set him on fire or something.

"What's it look like? Setting 352-B," she retorted, "Unlocks handcuffs."

"Regular ones," he groused to cover his surprise that she even knew what to do with the sonic. "Might do to go with settin' 4126-E first – disables energy bindin' technology."

"One day I'm gonna make you write up a manual for this this," Rose muttered as she keyed in the correct combination. A few seconds of whirring noise and the cuffs fell to the floor.

The Doctor stood up, massaging his wrists and Rose moved quickly to deal with the unconscious Time Agent. With an ease she probably wouldn't have had years earlier, she maneuvered the woman into the chair and transferred the cuffs to her, right after relieving her of the Vortex Manipulator. When she straightened up, the Doctor had his jacket back on.

She couldn't help looking at the familiar figure that he cut with appreciation. He seemed to notice, because he raised his eyebrow and offered her a challenging, "What?"

"Nothing," she told him quickly, fighting down the urge to blush. "It's just, I can count on one hand how many times I've seen you in only the jumper."

There was a pause, like he wasn't sure how to reply to that.

"You're different," he said finally.

She shot him an amused look. "Good different, or bad different?"

"Just different. You seem…older."

"Should do," she told him, her smile just a little sad. "Been at this kinda thing a while."

"'This kind of thing?'" he made a face. "'Ang on, 'ow old are you?"

"Oi, just as rude as ever, asking a lady her age," she teased, and then sobered. "I wouldn't be able to tell you even if I could. Lost track of it a bit over the years. You know what it's like in the TARDIS." She shrugged, and when he opened his mouth she cut him off, "And _no_, I can't tell you when I'm from 'cos that'd cause a paradox – and _yeah_, I know all about them. Travelled enough with you to learn a bit."

"But you didn't travel with me," he reminded her. "You said 'no'."

"Yeah, well, you forgot to mention the most important part the first time you asked," she said, offering him a tongue-touched smile.

"And that would be?"

The grin widened. "Well, she's not called the 'ARDIS', is she?"

He blinked, brain making the connection and realization dawned. "Time."

"Yup!"

She was grinning again, the seriousness of the situation unable to permanently diminish her happiness at seeing her first Doctor again. Still, the joy was short-lived. He wasn't the Doctor she was trying desperately to get back to, the one with wild hair and addictive smile. But she had come out in the right universe, at least, which meant she was getting closer.

If that wasn't a small victory, she didn't know what was.

"So, where am I that you're wanderin' around bumpin' into potentially universe endin' paradoxes?" he asked wryly.

"Stop fishing, Doctor," she warned him. "You're nowhere near enough to bump into yourself, if that's what you're worried about."

"Not really," he told her casually. "Run into meself a few times before. Nothin' a bit of memory repression won't fix."

She tensed. "So you'll forget this happening, then?"

"Not all of it," he told her. "I've gotta go back and fetch you now, don't I? Close the time loop. I could probably leave myself a message, but there'd be too much possibility of not interpretin' it right or gettin' the time wrong. Just don't tell me anythin' else, we'll go our separate ways and the universe'll be fine." Rose hesitated. "What?"

"Nothing I'd like more than to avoid a paradox," she said apologetically, "but I think I'm gonna need your help for something first."

He raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, waiting for her to go on.

She weighed exactly what she wanted to say to him, before finally speaking again. "Ran into this bloke about an hour ago. Right nasty bugger, him, and not from around this time either, I think. Before I know it, he's got the jump on me and scarpered with…something really important and really valuable."

Damn it, she had almost outted herself. She doubted anything like the dimension cannon had ever existed here, but by its very name the Doctor would be able to figure out its purpose. That couldn't happen!

The Doctor felt a wary sense of alarm at the idea of Rose coming to harm. "What is it?"

"It's something…something I can't tell you about. Anyhow, he took it and I need it back. Did a scan, but he's either got himself off-planet or got a really good cloaking device."

He focussed a frown on her. "It's dangerous, then?"

"Dangerous but necessary. Save-the-universe necessary," she assured him. "And the minute it does what it was supposed to, we're taking it apart so no one can ever use it again."

She held his gaze for a long moment, trying to assure him that she was telling the truth. She knew this him hadn't known her long and there was no reason for him to trust her, but right now everything rested on that.

She doubted the thief or Time Agent or whoever he had been would know how to use the dimension cannon properly, but every second he had it the probability of that increased. If anyone would have a way to find the bloke, it was the Doctor.

When he finally nodded, slowly and deliberately in a way that told her he was still measuring her up, something inside her unclenched.

"Well, you've got me curious," he said gruffly. "Guess it's time to save the world again, then?"

"So, have we got a plan for this, or are we just gonna wing it as usual?" Rose continued conversationally. The Doctor blinked at that, as though the 'as usual' part was still hard to process.

"I get the idea she'll be of use to us," he nodded at the still unconscious Time Agent.

At the reminder of her presence, Rose frowned.

Witnessing the woman's interrogation techniques when she first arrived at the abandoned building, she had felt something dark and primal rise up within her. Something that had filled her with the urge to slip forward and snap the woman's neck or beat her until she bled for causing him pain. The fire extinguisher had been a conveniently placed alternative at the time. Even now, though, there was something lingering beneath her skin that wanted to seek retribution, but the thought of how he might look at her if he saw her do something like that stayed her hand.

She adopted an unimpressed grimace. "Do we really want to work with someone who was about to barbecue your insides?"

"Think I'm strong enough to deal with a little electric shock," he complained. "Besides, she's lookin' for someone. Wouldn't surprise me if it's the same yob who mugged you."

"Bit too coincidental," Rose allowed, knowing that there was very rarely such thing as chance. "Most people around this century would have thought it was a toy."

"So we convince her she's better off assistin' us, track down your mystery device, send our futuristic friends off to wherever they're supposed to be, you go back to your me and I go back to pick you up in 2005."

"Yeah?"

"Already said I 'ad to, didn't I?"

"Oh, as if that's the only reason you come back for me," Rose teased. "Remember, Doctor, I know you."

The Doctor couldn't help the answering grin. "Been with me that long, then?"

"If y'all are gonna go at it, could you at least move to the other side of the room so I can watch?" the hoarse voice of the restrained Time Agent spoke up, cutting off Rose's response.

The Doctor glanced down at the bound woman, somewhat surprised that she had spoken. Beside him, Rose tensed and he could sense waves of ill-concealed hostility radiating from her.

She took a step forward, positioning herself between him and the Time Agent in a manner not unlike a mother wolf defending her pups. He might have been more indignant, or possibly indulgently amused, if the gesture didn't make his blood run cold.

Because it had become immediately clear once his shock at Rose Tyler's appearance wore off that she was far from the innocent shop girl he had rescued from a London basement. She was harder somehow, still outwardly youthful but with eyes that were much older than her.

"How long've you been awake?" Rose asked in a cold voice that he would never have expected to come from her.

"Since 'rude as ever'," the woman on the chair answered dismissively. "You didn't _actually _hit me that hard."

"I wasn' _actually_ aiming for brain damage," Rose retorted, before adopting a more business-like tone. "So…Time Agent…not from the fifty-first century, are you?"

"Fiftieth."

"Hunh."

The Doctor couldn't hold back a glance of surprise in Rose's direction.

Apparently they would have other dealings with the Time Agency beyond this, then. The knowledge was obviously not integral to maintaining the time line, or she wouldn't have mentioned it. He had noticed how careful she was being in giving him too much information, and with her admitted knowledge of paradoxes…

He had half a mind to track himself down and demand what he had done to Rose Tyler.

'If I'm even around to ask,' he added grimly. 'Something tells me I might not be.'

This second, darker suspicion had begun to form when he saw her clinical disarming and confinement of the Time Agent. This Rose had some kind of combat training in addition to her alleged time-travel knowledge, which she wouldn't have gained from him. There was a high probability he was looking at a Rose who had moved on from roaming about with him. He might have guessed she was working for UNIT, except usually they provided back-up and she was very clearly alone.

Another worrying fact, that.

Much as the part of him that had taken an instant liking to her in 2005 wanted to trust this Rose Tyler, it wasn't unheard of for a former companion to become dangerous in their own right after leaving him. His hearts clenched at the thought of such a possibility that happening to the sunny girl he had first met.

Now wasn't the time to dwell on his fears for the future, though, and instead he addressed the stranger. "Got a name we can use? Or should we just call you 'Agent'?"

"Gertrude Farrell," the woman answered after a calculating glance. "And you two? The Doctor and Rose Tyler, was it? Who are you?"

A faintly beguiling yet chillingly wolfish grin broke out on Rose's face. "The stuff of legends."

Her words rang like yet another inside joke that he was not privy to, but it didn't stop the answering grin appearing on his own face. Suspicions over her identity and motives aside, he couldn't help feeling buoyed by her very presence; something about Rose Tyler filled him with something that might have once resembled contentment.

It was a dangerous ability.

"Yeah, that's great and all, but it doesn't help me trust you none," Gertrude Farrell said dryly. "Neither does keeping me tied to a chair. And I'll have my wristband back too, thanks."

"Tell us who you're after and maybe we'll talk," the Rose countered. "Considering you attacked the Doctor, we've got less incentive to trust you jus' yet."

"By now your little lie detector should have told you we're not in cahoots with whoever you're lookin' for," the Doctor pointed out. "You never did answer about why you're after him."

The Time Agent made a face at that.

"You were right," she grudgingly allowed. "The guy I'm looking for – Malcolm Lowell – he used to be one of us. Or will be one of us, in my time stream. He's from the Agency's future."

"Meaning he's likely got information on every operative who's ever worked for you lot," the Doctor scoffed. "Rassilon save us from Neanderthals wielding Vortex Manipulators."

"He knows the Archives well enough to have profiles on everyone," Gertrude confirmed, ignoring the jibe. "He's been dodging us for five standard years, jumping timelines whenever there's even a hint of Agency presence. That's why everything is off the books now and why we've been authorized to neutralize him using any means necessary and to keep it quiet."

"Including torturing innocent bystanders?" Rose demanded angrily.

Gertrude fixed her with a stare that had the decency to be somewhat apologetic. "Your friend's bio- and temporal signatures are so far from the contemporary period that it was a logical assumption to make."

"Well, you know what they say about 'assuming''," the Doctor said lightly.

"Look, I feel bad about that, but it's a small price to pay to keep the timeline safe," Gertrude hedged.

It was a sentiment the Doctor could understand, even if he didn't particularly enjoy having his insides zapped for the sake of protecting continuity. Rose made a face as well, but appeared willing to cede the point as well, because instead of continuing on that train of thought, she asked, "So wha's he doing here? Not exactly a really interesting time period, is it?"

"His M.O. for the longest time was just selling anachronistic technology to developing companies and worlds a few years ahead of their actual release dates," Gertrude explained. "It caused minor headaches in the early days, little tweaks to history but nothing really paradoxical."

"Let me guess – it didn' stay that way?"

"He started stepping up his game a few years back – began dealing in ideas and tech that completely changed the face of various worlds," Gertrude verified. "Not only did it cause a ton of mayhem and an increase in warfare throughout certain quadrants, but in some cases entire timelines got destroyed. We've had Agents flitting back and forth through time like crazy trying to fix the weak points. Mostly he sticks to distant worlds, far from human historical events. Except now…well, he's here."

"In a time period when even the smallest change can unmake everything," the Doctor finished. He was scowling, an action which had gotten more pronounced with every word from the Time Agent. The news of this Lowell character's deeds, his audacity at mucking about with the timelines the Doctor was meant to protect, angered him. "And you think there's someone he's meeting with?"

"Obviously. He's got to sell his merchandise to someone for anything to happen."

"And he probably cloaked himself and any of the tech on him the minute he showed up," Rose mused.

"Including whatever you're trying to get back," Gertrude agreed. "It's why I've been a bit desperate lately. I've been on this planet for three weeks now, jumping back and forward trying to scan news of events for a sign of where he might be. But as far as I can figure, there's literally _nothing_ going on right now."

"Anything you can think of?" the Doctor asked of Rose. "It's your time, after all."

Rose smiled grimly. "Christmas, 1998? I wasn' exactly paying attention to world events back then. It was a bad time – Mum and me couldn' even afford Christmas. Doubt I would've even noticed an alien invasion that year."

"So we've got a rogue ex-Time Agent running about with something super-secret that I apparently can't know about and – hang on, you never did say what exactly your boy was peddling," the Doctor trailed off, addressing Gertrude.

"We're not completely sure, since every Agent that's come close to catching him has been neutralized," Gertrude answered grimly. "But the last location before he came here was the Stirling Quadrant around the time localized CETP generators were all the rage."

A chill crept up the Doctor's spine. "And you think that's what he's got?"

"Maybe not an actual device, but the plans for one, yeah."

"One's as bad as the other," the Doctor said darkly. "Technology like that won't just alter history – it'll destroy it and every part of the universe that's been touched by it."

* * *

TBC

Reviews and concrit are love!


	3. Chapter Two: Ships Passing in the Night

_**The Shortest Life  
**__**by ErtheChilde**_

* * *

"_Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change."_

_- Thomas Hardy_

* * *

**TWO**

Rose cleared her throat. "For those of us that don't speak _Popular Mechanics_ _for Time Travellers_, what's a CET?"

"CETP," the Doctor corrected, the preoccupied frown on his face not fading. "Stands for 'Continuous Electromagnetic Tectonic Pulse'."

"And that's what when it's at home?" Rose asked, having never heard of such a device but having a worrying suspicion about what it did.

"A big technology-off switch," Gertrude supplied. "Shuts off all higher electrical function and basically cancels out the laws of physics within a planet's atmosphere."

"Around the twenty-sixth century a particularly technology averse group of 'umans from the Stirling Quadrant figured out a way to cancel out all industrial development on their planet," the Doctor elaborated. "They built these devices – localized CETP generators – which they buried down deep in the planet core during the terraformin' process and then activated."

"They were a huge hit with all the back-to-the-land societies," Gertrude continued. "The generators could pretty much send people back to simpler times, like the old earth Stone Age. No computers, no indoor heating, no functional explosives – just good old work of human hands. Nothing wrong with that, of course, until some genius weaponized it."

"It's why it was outlawed about a 'undred years later – not before it caused a dozen different genocides, though," the Doctor finished with a scowl. "Not 'ard to wipe out your enemies if you cut off every bit of machinery they depend on." He crossed his arms. "What I'd like to know is who this Lowell character's buyer would be. That's future technology. No one from this time should know about it, let alone be keen to buy it."

"I don't think his contact is from this time," Rose mused, brain hurrying to catch up with the sudden onslaught of information. "Before he stole the – before he stole from me, he said he would've thought I was the contact 'cos my temporal signature's not from around here."

"Meaning his contact's the middle man," Gertrude realized. "Lowell sells the device schematics to his contact, who finds a buyer for it in this century. I'm pretty sure there are some materials it needs that don't exist yet, so there'll have to be someone funding research into synthesizing those materials. We just have to figure out who'd be interested."

"It takes three months to build a CETP generator," the Doctor pointed out. "That's with all the right parts. With rudimentary materials I'd say…about a year before it'd be functional."

"Anything interesting supposed to happen around here within the next year?" Gertrude asked.

Rose started to mentally tally up the months in her head, comparing her sparse knowledge of her world's history with significant events that might have something to do with a device that stopped all technology.

In the meantime, the Doctor began to rattle off random facts as he thought out loud. "…Wars in Kosovo, lack of technology there would turn the tide – failed mission to Mars, though a CETP wouldn't be much use in that case – Manchester United defeats Bayern Munich in the UEFA League Final, which isn't exactly vital but I can see a rabid football fan –"

"Y2K!" The words flew from Rose's mouth.

Both the Doctor and Gertrude stared at her with identical nonplussed expressions.

"The year 2000?" she went on. "A year from now will be coming up on the millennium and there was that huge Y2K conspiracy. You know, the big to-do about how computers would fail, airplanes were gonna fall from the sky and the world would end at midnight?"

"That's just dumb," Gertrude remarked. "Everyone knows the world ends in the year 5 000 000 000 000."

Rose carefully didn't remark on the fact that she had been there to watch it, instead continuing on excitedly, "I remember 2000. There were all those nutters going on about how everything was gonna stop at New Years'. People were quitting their jobs and throwing end-of-the-world parties left and right."

"They must have felt stupid when it didn't end," Gertrude remarked.

"Not 'alf as stupid as all those sects out there who were absolutely sure they were gettin' a one-way ticket to Paradise come Doomsday," the Doctor pointed out, his tone suggesting he had caught on to what Rose was implying. "A lot of those were privately funded, too. Real wealthy. They'd've taken a financial blow when the planet kept spinnin', and then spent decades dealing with their credibility droppin'. The _really_ financially stable ones might even 'ang on a few centuries the way of the Stone Masons."

"They might have future supporters who decided to go back and ensure their predictions about the end of the world came true," Gertrude said, eyes widening as she caught on as well.

"It'd be a suicide mission for them, disrupting their own timeline like that. But I guess in their eyes, they'd be doing God's work," Rose finished.

"Not that any of their kind would get to enjoy it," the Doctor pointed out. "I bet your friend Lowell 'asn't explained the concept of paradoxes to his buyer."

"Speaking of, how's that work for him?" Rose wanted to know. "If Lowell sells this anti-technology thing to someone and it gets built here, they flip the switch and the Earth goes back to the Stone Age. Doesn't that mean every human in space would just...disappear? The git seemed human enough to me."

"He's human," Gertrude confirmed. "But I'm pretty sure that he's also insane. I don't think he really cares if he erases himself at the moment."

"Unless 'e's found or created a paradox machine to protect 'imself from any temporal consequences of 'is business," the Doctor mused darkly. "Might be usin' a modified form of a Monan occlusion field." At both hers and Gertrude's confused looks, he shook his head. "Not important right now."

"Either way, all of this brings us back to how we're supposed to find him," Rose said.

"By 'we', y'all mean the three of us, right?" Gertrude demanded. "As in, you're gonna let me out of these cuffs sometime soon?"

"Don't pretend you 'aven't 'ad your wrists free for the past ten minutes," the Doctor told her, making Rose glance up with a start. "Cuffs like that are built with isomorphic fail safes to make sure their owner doesn't end up in exactly this kind of situation."

"Then you know I could have taken you both out if I needed to but didn't," the Time Agent said, unrepentant. She stood, folding her loosened arms in front of her. "I figure we're all on the same side, anyway. So how's about instead of standing around glaring at each other we figure out how to find Lowell?"

"That depends on if you think you can stick with using your brain instead of your stun gun," Rose told her glacially.

Gertrude held up her recently freed hands in a defensive gesture. "Hey, I get it. You're mad I stunned your partner, and I'm sorry, but it was totally a mistaken identity thing. How about we save the world first and then you and me can do the chick-fight thing?"

Rose considered her, and then nodded.

"But you're not getting the Vortex Manipulator back –" when Gertrude opened her mouth to protest, she went on, "– not 'til we've got this mess sorted."

"And how do you expect to do that?" the Time Agent grumbled. "Trying to follow someone who can hop through time without our own device to hop through time? Not gonna work."

"You leave that to me," the Doctor spoke up. "Need to figure out where 'e's gonna be before we can follow 'im, anyhow."

"And how are we supposed to do that? We don't even know when this thing is gonna go down."

"I think it's safe to say it's 'appenin' tonight, or I wouldn't be 'ere," he answered, a little testily, and Rose had to fight back a smile. She knew all too well the TARDIS tendency to bring the Doctor to places that – while he might not have been aiming for them – he was needed.

"But he's still got a Vortex Manipulator and who knows what else," Gertrude pointed out, shooting her a suspicious look that was likely concerning her mysterious device. Rose resolutely ignored that. "He could be anywhere on the planet."

"Trust me, that'll be the least of our problems," the Doctor said, unconcerned. "Now, if you'll excuse me…"

He strode for the door without further ado.

"Where's he think he's going?" Gertrude demanded as his hurried tread echoed in the abandoned hallway toward the stairwell. "We haven't even got a plan yet!"

"Well, knowing himself, he's got at least four or five," Rose replied in amused exasperation. "He just hasn't seen fit to tell us yet. We'd better follow him before he forgets about the silly humans; he always used to do that in the beginning…"

Gertrude shot her a measuring look. "You've known him a while, then?"

Rose smiled wryly. "Sometimes it seems like a lifetime."

"But you're obviously not with him anymore," Gertrude pointed out bluntly. "Judging from the way you look at him, I'd say you're trying to keep him from knowing about more than just what was stolen from you."

Rose carefully schooled her expression into one of neutrality. "Even if I am, it isn't any of your business"

Gertrude snorted "Okay, I get it; you don't like me–"

"Figured that out on your own, then?"

"–but you might wanna listen to me anyway."

"And why's that?"

"'Cause from where I'm standing, your girly bits are what's making your decisions for you and not your brain," the Time Agent told her. "I counted at least four times you gave your boyfriend-not-yet-boyfriend enough information to cause a potential paradox. Not including the fact you're actually hanging around here when you should be headed as far from him as possible. If we didn't have a more pressing situation, I'd be within my rights to arrest you."

"When this is all over, you're more than welcome to try," Rose told her, not in the least disturbed by the veiled threat; circumstances permitting, she'd have the dimension cannon and be back to Torchwood before the Time Agent had a chance to get to her. "Until then, keep your nose outta my business." She paused, considered her words and then added an additional, "And my girly bits, for that matter."

~*~ΘΣ~*~

The Doctor strode into the TARDIS, relieved to find she was once again allowing him inside. He wasn't surprised; she knew he wasn't about to leave in the middle of a crisis or whatever puzzle he was trying to solve, and definitely not one that involved universe ending paradoxes, Time Agents and a rather perplexing incarnation of Rose Tyler.

'Speaking of,' he added thoughtfully, watching out of the corner of his eye while he pulled the scanner around as she and the Time Agent followed him into the ship. Unlike the last two times he had seen Rose come through the front door, her eyes were dancing and a wide smile now broke out on her face.

"Hello, gorgeous," he heard her murmur, reaching out to stroke one of the coral support struts with the same familiarity and affection he had only known himself and Susan to use.

The sight of it sent a sharp queer jab of not-quite-pain through his hearts.

Clearly she had travelled – would travel – with them a long time.

"This is…"

He glanced up at Gertrude, who was staring at the cavernous interior of the TARDIS with the same gobsmacked expression everyone who saw it for the first time had. He rolled his eyes, and mentally counted down to the inevitable –

"It's smaller on the outside," Gertrude pointed out numbly yet trying to appear unaffected. He shot her a measuring glance.

'Time Agents. Always have to be different,' he thought wryly as he booted up the TARDIS' data mainframe.

"What're you doing?" Rose wanted to know, coming over to join him.

"Smartest ship in the universe – she could find a wasp's personal timeline within the entire existence of its species," the Doctor replied as he navigated quickly through the various programs in the system in search for the one he was looking for. "One of the basic equations that lets the TARDIS navigate the Vortex involves possible and probable timelines. If I tweak it, I can likely get her to lock onto this Lowell character."

Rose's eyebrows raised in surprise. "You can do tha'?"

"You saying I haven't before? Shouldn't be more difficult than some primate from your time using an Internet search engi – " He trailed off as the screen flickered. "No!" Swirling Gallifreyan text told him that there was an error. "No, no, no!"

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that sounds bad," Gertrude remarked, attention wavering from the dimensional transcendentalism of the TARDIS.

"The program's damaged," the Doctor said, "Or it's no longer possible to operate it within the existent parameters."

He hadn't use the search program since before the war, which meant that it was still geared to a timeline mainframe where Gallifrey was the center of the Normal Space timeline. Even a ship as advanced as the TARDIS could be hindered by obsolete technology. He would have to recalibrate everything, but that would take time – time which they didn't have.

The solution to the problem presented itself readily; in fact, it had been in his mind since the Time Agent pointed out that they didn't know where their quarry was going to be.

A particular gift of the Time Lords had always been the fact that they had the entirety of time and space running through their heads. Every second, they could see what was, what had been, what could be and what must never come to pass.

Part of that gift was a mere accident of fate, a genetic quirk allowing the time-sensitive gene to activate; most of it was due to exposure to the Untempered Schism. From that terrifying moment, only centuries of study and mental practice at the Academy allowed a Time Lord to ignore the constant flux of time in their minds for the sake of their sanity.

'Usually. Unless your name was Master or Rani or Rassilon,' the Doctor amended grimly.

It was that mental fortitude that had given him the strength to shut his eyes to the dance of past, present and future – to effectively switch off his time sense – after the War. It had been the only thing that kept him from succumbing to the crushing guilt and killing himself until he was out of regenerations.

The necessity of opening his mind back up to that part of him was terrifying, and his mental wounds were still too painful and raw for him to want to try it.

"Right, Plan B," he announced jovially. "Old-fashioned and slow, but then, what's an adventure without a bit of unpredictability in the face of danger?"

"He's gonna start making sense sometime soon, right?" Gertrude asked Rose archly.

"We can't stop the exchange from happening tonight, 'cos we don't know where or when or the whos – well, half of the whos, at any rate," the Doctor mused. "So we'll have to settle for narrowing down who stands to benefit from CETP technology and stop them before they get their hands on it."

"But that means Lowell gets away!" Gertrude objected.

"S'not really my immediate concern," the Doctor told her. "I'm more worried about the universe not ripping apart, not a Time Agent who's gone AWOL. We can deal with him once we make sure reality doesn't explode –"

"If he gets away, more than one reality will explode," Rose interrupted. "If he figures ou' exactly wha' the device he took from me does, we – and every universe ou' there – are gonna be in trouble." She offered him an apologetic look when he sent her a measuring look. "Sorry. Trying to skirt around the need-to-know information with you is hard."

"Already told you I'm gonna forget all this," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but I know you – and if you found out the whole truth, you'd bust out of your own timeline to do something about it, paradox or not," Rose said quietly. "Especially the you righ' now, so soon after…"

She trailed off, and understanding hit him like a blow to the solar plexus.

She knew about the War.

"How do you…?"

"You told me."

"And you're still…" he couldn't finish the sentence. She knew about the War, knew he was the only one left, and likely knew what he had done.

And she was still looking at him like he was more man than monster.

"You did what you had to do," she told him, voice firm as though she could hear his thoughts. "Sometimes you jus'…have to. It hurts, but you go through with it because it's what needs to be done." She bit her lip, and then quietly added, "And on that note, I know how we can figure out when Lowell makes the exchange. I think you do too, Doctor."

To say he was stunned was an understatement. It was immediately clear to him that she was talking about tracing timelines, something she shouldn't know about. It wasn't exactly a skill he advertised, especially to his companions, as he didn't want to be plagued by constant questions as to why he didn't just 'look ahead' when they fell into trouble.

What the hell had he done that had necessitated explaining that ability to her? Disregarding his own glancing whim to use it before, obviously he hadn't made his point to her if she expected him to use it now.

"No," he said, trying for firm and instead managing strained.

"Doctor –"

"If you know what's happened, you know why not."

"I also know it's probably the only way we have to stop this nutter," Rose argued. He opened his mouth to protest, "I know it's not something easy I'm asking, Doctor, but you can' turn off who you are 'cos of wha' happened. You're better than tha'."

He grunted in contemptuous disbelief.

"Shut up, you are," she told him firmly. "And I dunno abou' you, but I've a personal interest in the world still being there next Christmas. And the day after. And the day after tha'. For the next seven years until some alien bloke saves me from a basement full of shop window dummies and blows up my job."

The Doctor felt mouth go dry at the blatant belief in her words, still having trouble reconciling his memory of the wide-eyed young girl in an alleyway with the confidant, driven woman now daring him to step up to the plate.

"Can one of you fill me in on what your plan is, or do I need to know the secret handshake?" Gertrude deadpanned, abruptly reminding them that she was still there.

"He's a bit precognitive," Rose said, not looking away from him. "He can trace timelines."

"Long as I don't look too closely at my own," he admitted grudgingly. "Might be able to narrow down the moment when Earth's history changes."

"Okay, sure, if you say so," Gertrude said, clearly sceptical but not backing away yet. "So why didn't you do that from the get-go?"

"Because it's extremely painful when you're the only one around to do it," Rose explained quietly. She offered him an apologetic look. "You told me – _will_ tell me – tha' the first time you tried was the hardes', but every time after it was easier."

The prognosis wasn't exactly happy news to him, but hopeful all the same.

"'Sides," Rose went on, offering him a comforting smile. "The TARDIS wouldn' let you get lost. She's too clever than tha' by half."

Whatever minute sliver of mistrust he felt towards this version of Rose, those words were the truth at least.

"Fine," he said in a clipped tone.

"Who's the TARDIS?" Gertrude wanted to know.

"The ship," Rose answered.

"This ship? It's alive?"

"It's complicated."

"You're not kidding!"

"Shut up a minute, the pair of you," the Doctor ordered, already feeling uneasy at doing this with an audience. It wasn't exactly how he would have pictured unblocking his abilities, but with the TARDIS' systems acting up it was the only option.

He let his eyes fall shut and slowly, cautiously let the barrier between himself and time fall away.

The pain was just as he imagined it would be: a vast, ever-changing tangle of time and probability that loomed before him, its loose threads hurtling faster and faster toward a fixed end that had never existed before. Realities spawned and were destroyed within picoseconds, temporal parasites feasting on accidental paradoxes and entropy building up like necrotic tissue.

His own timeline pulsed and burned within that tangle, disjointed as every Time Lord's was. Had been. He had to look away and focus on the task at hand.

The blurry, indistinct shadows that had existed on the periphery of his mind since the War suddenly sprang fully formed into infinite reaching threads. They intersected and coiled around the primary timeline like weeds, choking it and changing it as paradoxes and possibilities warred for dominance.

Searching the timelines after so long without calling on the ability was like staring into a burning sun. Without the bolstering presence of his people, tracing through individual timelines felt like being chained to a comet. He was quickly losing himself in the pull of time, the ache in his hearts overwhelming his brain's focus on the task.

In his mind, he felt the drum of his own heartbeat, pounding out a sinister rhythm. _'What is…what was…what could be…what must not be…what is…what was…what could be…'_

Outside of the glowing Gordian knot of Time, there was nothing but echoing, endless darkness.

The realization was powerfully overwhelming, and he suddenly felt crushed in by the emptiness and loneliness he had been hiding from since regenerating.

He couldn't breathe, drowning in the sea of golden timelines, dizzy as they wove into one another or abruptly snapped off or spawned new timelines with no reason. He was the only one left with the ability to fix the snarls in the lines, yet as he watched the disorder continue, being made and unmade at an exponential rate, he knew that the task was too insurmountable.

He would never be able to do this.

He felt himself begin to drift, the horror of the disordered timelines causing his senses to shy away on principle.

Something pink and golden flickered on the edge of his consciousness.

"_Doctor."_

Abruptly, his view of the shredded web of time shifted, and he found himself instead assaulted by a barrage of images.

Images that were familiar to him, but not in the same way his own memories were; these images were of him:

– _Hand wrapped around a smaller hand, running through a dingy basement – ripping a plastic arm away – watching with a guarded look after admitting he was alien – staring up with his face illuminated by a vat of burning plastic – _

He was suddenly aware of a hand in his own.

'Rose,' he thought, stunned; he knew he was still within his mind, yet suddenly he could see her standing beside him, holding his hand as she stared out at the timelines that stretched before them.

'Doctor,' she confirmed, her mouth not moving but her smile as impish as the tone he imagined for her.

'How are you doing this?' he demanded. 'You're not telepathic. I would have noticed.'

'Nope,' she replied, pronouncing the 'p' in a rather exaggerated fashion that seemed incongruous with the fact neither of them was physically speaking. 'Not telepathic. But you are. And you once said something along the lines of 'even if I couldn't transmit, I could receive."

An image accompanied that sentiment before she could completely slam down a mental door on it; it was a memory filled with such intimacy, desperation, completion and need that he nearly dropped her hand in surprise.

'The TARDIS patched me through, I think,' she went on, pretending neither of them had seen that particular memory. 'So you don't have to do it alone.'

'You won't be much use,' he pointed out, somewhat shakily. 'I can barely navigate this mess, and I'm a Time Lord.'

'And I'm just a stupid ape, yeah?' she retorted, but there was a determined smile on her face. 'Never said I would be doing the navigating. You're the designated driver, I'm just here to keep you company.'

He wanted to scoff at the sheer human audacity to think that mere stubbornness could lead to success, but her hand suddenly tightened on his and he was once more assaulted by an outside force. This time, it was emotions instead of memories –

_Joy and relief at seeing him – unquestionable belief that together they could defeat any obstacle – overwhelming sadness that they would soon be parted – hope that they would meet again, in the right time – but underlying all of that, there was a deep, unquestionable pulse of – _

He nearly balked at the strength of that one emotion, staring at the subconscious manifestation of the woman who held his hand now.

How was it possible that she could feel _that_ toward him? After everything he had done, surely she couldn't…?

The determined gaze and resolute refusal of the emotion to subside might as well have been an answer, and his mind shied away from that. He couldn't think about that, it was still too painful.

No matter how much he suddenly wanted to know the exact nature of their future relationship.

'Come on, then, we've got a universe to save,' she whispered to him, either unaware of the shock he felt at the recent revelation or perhaps knowing that he didn't have the ability to accept it just yet.

From what he now understood of her, he was sure it was the latter.

Oddly enough, with her presence by his side, both holding his hand and supporting his search with her unquestioning faith in his abilities, the tangled timelines before him didn't seem as daunting.

Oh, they were still horribly twisted and nonsensical, but he could at least make out some of them.

There!

"December thirty-first, 1999," he said out loud, barely hearing the surprised intake of breath from somewhere nearby; his eyes remained closed, mind focussed on the timeline as images threw themselves at him. "The next day, all forms of high-energy-density technology stop working. It takes a few months, but modern civilization comes crashing down – billions die. There's one group that takes advantage, saying they predicted it. They end up taking over and impose a Luddite, theocratic society. The Neo-Dark Ages."

That was all that he could take, even with Rose beside him.

With herculean effort, he closed the wall back down between himself and his time sense, allowing the golden web to become nothing but shadows to him once again.

He would not be doing it again anytime soon. In addition to being unwilling to face the pain again, it was too tempting to see what his future held. Especially with regards to the blond woman by his side.

Breathing so hard he realized he had almost engaged his respiratory bypass, he opened his eyes to twin looks of perturbation.

The Doctor dropped Rose's and she came back to herself feeling like she had been doused by a solid wave of icy water. Acting as a psychic support system when you weren't naturally telepathic was difficult, and if it hadn't been for the TARDIS she wouldn't have been able to do it.

She felt the faint, unintelligible song that she had heard from the TARDIS since the day on the Gamestation wash over her. Although she couldn't understand the ship the way the Doctor could, a sense of gratitude and comfort filled her, as though the ship wanted to make sure she was alright.

'I'm not the one who needs comfort,' she thought, glancing over at the Doctor who was resolutely avoiding her gaze. Apparently what she had inadvertently shown him had rattled him. 'Guess I should be glad it was that and not the bit about the stars going out…'

Gertrude's blunt, disbelieving voice interrupted her thoughts. "That's what's gonna happen?"

"If we're lucky," the Doctor said grimly.

"What do you mean, _'if we're lucky_'," Gertrude hissed. "How is that lucky?"

"'Cos it means the Reapers didn't up and devour all of this reality. It means some of the universe will survive and restart from the point when everythin' changes. But seein' as 'ow there's no one around to ensure that 'appens anymore, I wouldn't 'old your breath!"

"Then we've got to stop it!" Gertrude cried. "This cult…what were they called? We can track them down."

The Doctor frowned, looking as though he was trying to remember what he had seen. "Judgin' from the symbols they painted all about, I'd wager it was the Congregation of the Unending Trinity."

"Who?" Rose asked.

"Some New Age group that got its start around the time you were born," he told her. "Right now, they've been predictin' nuclear war and the end of the world for a solid decade. They're holed up on a few properties outside of Cardiff – underground shelters, stockpiles of food, clothes and weapons. That sor' of thing."

"It's always bloody Cardiff," Rose said with a shake of her head.

He shot her a bemused look, and went on, "They get a bit of fame around the year 2000, obviously, but by the twenty-third century they're little more than a fringe group of zealous fanatics that occasionally has members immolate themselves when they think people are forgettin' they exist."

"If they're a fringe cult, where would they get the money to hire an Ex-Time Agent to sell them stolen technology like a…CETP, you said?" Rose asked. "You'd think that'd be a bit pricey, yeah?"

"My thoughts exactly."

"Not…necessarily," Gertrude offered, sounding more hesitant than she had since they met. When the Doctor and Rose waited for her to continue, she added, "I mean, members of the group in the twenty-third century would definitely have no way of affording that. From what I remember about them, they were living in work-camp conditions that last going off. But there would have been any number of former members who left and made something of themselves."

"And not every member of the group woulda left because they didn't believe the core teachings anymore," the Doctor caught on. "Some mighta left 'cos the party line wasn't cuttin' it anymore." Gertrude nodded thoughtfully. "I assume you've a guess?"

"More of an inkling," she admitted. "Have y'all ever herd of Angra Gorg?"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "The terrorist?"

"Yeah. Responsible for bombing the Lagrange colonies," Gertrude answered, looking surprised that the Doctor knew exactly who she was talking about. Rose was still amazed by just how much historical knowledge the Doctor kept stored in his brain. "He was born into that cult."

"You think it might be 'im?"

"Well, he did pull off one of the worst attacks in the history of the Sol 3 system in the name of the CUT's teachings. And then he promised he was preparing something even bigger and just disappeared. No one ever heard from him again."

"You mean, what if he didn't just disappear," Rose spoke up, catching on despite not knowing anything about the person in question. "What if he came here."

"That's about the time you lot make great strides in time travel," the Doctor mused grimly. "It would fit."

"Great strides," Gertrude snorted. "It didn't really get off its feet for another two thousand years – those early devices were primitive and dangerous."

"And they should've stayed that way," the Doctor countered. "You lot 'ave no business messin' around with things you don't understand."

"Oh, yeah, because you're one to talk –"

"Can we put the Time-Lords-versus-Time-Agents argument aside for a mo'?" Rose interjected. "I think this Gorg person's a bit more important right now."

"Maybe," Gertrude allowed, offering the Doctor one more glower. "Maybe not. All of this is just a bunch of guesswork – the connections are too coincidental."

"No such thing as coincidence," Rose declared. "Not in my experience, anyhow. From what you say, this bloke has the motive and the means – and who says it wasn't Lowell who contacted him? Set up a meeting close enough to Volcano Day to put things in motion but far enough away that the Time Agency wouldn't notice."

"'Volcano Day'?" the Doctor echoed.

"Even if you're right, it still doesn't help us much," Gertrude said. "We don't know where he is. Unless –" she turned to the Doctor, " – can you do that timeline thing again?"

"No," he said firmly, a shadow passing across his face and leaving no room for argument.

"Well, then we're humped. And now we've got two nutjobs getting ready to destroy the world."

"You both know what he looks like, yeah?" Rose asked.

"Vaguely," the Doctor agreed, while Gertrude nodded.

"Then let's tap the CCTV system here. It's not the most advanced bit of security, seeing as how it's 1998, but it's something."

"Still too much like searching for a needle in a haystack," Gertrude complained.

"Actually…that might work," the Doctor mused, considering Rose. "Time travel devices from the twenty-third century weren't just primitive and dangerous…but they 'ad adverse effects on anyone that used them. Problems with dematerialization and rematerialization, body reconstruction…they were only really good for one or two trips, and to a body not used to it…well, they'd need time and a place to recover."

"They'd avoid hospitals," Gertrude theorized slowly, "And I doubt the currency from the twenty-third century is the same as now, so he'd need to go somewhere free."

"Homeless shelter, maybe – if he didn't rob someone so he could afford a room somewhere," Rose suggested. "And most of those have security feeds in case of trouble." She turned to the Doctor and held up her phone. "Think you can fix this so it can tap into the security network?"

"I'll do you one better – I'll get it to lock on to the face of our friend Mr. Gorg," the Doctor smirked, reaching for her phone. He already had his screwdriver in hand.

With a little applied jiggery-pokery and forced collaboration between the Doctor and Gertrude to identify their target, they eventually found Grog.

As it turned out, tracking him down was the easier part.

The Doctor hadn't lied when he explained the problems associated with primitive time travel. The man that they ended up tracking to a shelter on the edge of the city and who then led them on a mad nighttime chase along the Thames didn't look completely like either the Doctor's or Gertrude's memories.

His face was hideously distorted, with one side appearing normal while the other side was distinctly lower. His eye, nostril and part of his mouth were out of sync with the rest of his face, as though someone had drawn a line down the middle.

Rose had felt a flash of nausea at the thought of such a fate having been a possibility for her if the early dimension cannon trials had gone differently.

Upon catching Grog and questioning him, it was also apparent that he'd changed mentally as well. The Doctor knew from his study history that Angra Gorg had been known for his chillingly calculated intelligence; the drooling, muttering man Rose eventually tackled to the ground was only passingly related to that.

A rambling conversation later and they managed to parse what Gorg remembered about why he was in twentieth century London, and where he was meeting with Lowell.

"Now what?" Rose asked quietly when they finished. "We can't just leave him, can we?"

"Can't send 'im back," the Doctor replied. "'istory says 'e vanished."

"That's not what I meant," she replied. "He's…he seems like he's in pain."

"Probably," the Doctor answered. "Though I can think of worse punishments for a murderer of his calibre dyin' in anonymity and madness."

She shot him an look. "Maybe if he knew his own mind anymore, I'd agree with you. But right now…he doesn't understand. He's not the same as he was. And he's in pain."

"Rose Tyler, if you've been travelin' with me as long as I think you 'ave, you know we can't save everyone. Shouldn't, either."

"No, but that doesn't mean you can't save _anyone_, even people that don't deserve it," she argued. "How does leaving him to suffer make us any better than him?"

The Doctor was staring at her with the same hard but searching gaze he had treated to her six years before in a Utah bunker. The similarities in the situation were not lost on Rose, and she stuck by her words.

"Can't say I exactly agree with any of that," Gertrude spoke up, breaking the tension. "But I'd feel a mite safer knowing he's out of the equation for good. I can take of it. Humane-like."

The Doctor was quiet a moment longer, and then walked away without a word. Rose faltered for a moment about leaving the Time Agent with Gorg, but when the latter gave her a nod suggesting she would follow later, she hurried off.

They were out of sight and earshot when the Doctor finally turned to her and gave her a long look.

"You're not actually travelin' with me anymore, are you?"

She tensed at that. "I guess she was right about me not being careful."

"Oh, you were," he said, offering her a tight smirk. "Came to my own conclusions – the way you talk now?" Rose blinked, having completely forgotten about the accent she had schooled herself out of over the years. "The things you know but definitely wouldn't've where I left you…biggest one's the way you look at me, though. Like you're lookin' at a ghost. S'pose I've gone and regenerated then, 'ave I?"

She felt the blood rush from her face. "Yeah."

"That's discouragin'," he sighed. He offered her a sharp look. "The regeneration's not the reason…?"

"No!" she insisted. "I mean, it was a shock – new face and all, and I was upset at first, but…you're him and he's you. I was with him as long as I was with you, until…"

She couldn't voice what had happened.

"Until we're separated," the Doctor finished stonily.

"Temporarily," she assured him. "I'm gonna find you again. Or you're gonna find me. Maybe we'll meet in the middle."

"Do I know you're lookin' for me?"

"No," she replied sadly. "Pretty sure you think I'm lost forever. The word 'impossible' mighta been tossed around once or twice. But seeing as I'm here, talking to you? That's at least halfway to impossible."

He shook his head, a hollow feeling taking shape in the pit of his stomach. "Maybe I just say that to you because it's time. Not one for companions stickin' around indefinitely – can't imagine wantin' you to waste too much of your life on me once we part."

Anger bubbled up within Rose at that throwaway comment.

"No," she hissed. "That wasn't the reason and that'll never be the case! I promised you forever, and however much of a forever I've got left, it's yours!"

His mouth fell open at that, and she could tell that something about that had caught him off-guard. But she didn't get a chance to follow up on it, because Gertrude appeared beside them at that precise moment.

"Sorry to break up the lovefest," she said, not sounding sorry in the least. "But we still have to find Lowell – and we've yet got a way to stop him."

The Doctor abruptly shifting his attention back to their current task.

"Got an idea about that," he said, and fixed her with a gaze that promised they would talk more about it later. "Tell me, Rose, 'ow'd you say he got the jump on you?"

~*~ΘΣ~*~

The rail yard outside of Willesden Sidings was empty of people but for the swatch character in period clothing standing in the light of the waning moon. He appeared swiftly and silently into thin air, adjusting something large and vaguely weapon-shaped that was strapped to his back before keying something into the wristband he wore.

Striding toward the man, the Doctor hoped the teleportation disruptor Gertrude had set up would do its job.

After piecing together from Gorg the details of the exchange, the Doctor had set the TARDIS' course to several hours before the expected meeting point in order to prepare for Lowell's arrival. Between himself and Gertrude they had managed to design a primitive containment area to ensure Lowell wouldn't be able to Vortex out.

After that, it had been unanimously agreed that he would be the one to meet with Lowell. The latter would be able to spot Gertrude as an ex-Time Agent with ease, and considering he had already run into Rose once, it was better he didn't see her again.

"Besides, you kinda look like his type of people," Gertrude had said, eying him appreciatively. "Total badass."

He'd been puzzled at the comment and had turned to Rose to explain it, only to find that same appreciative look on her face as well. When she'd caught him looking she'd gone red and looked away.

Despite being utterly bemused, he hadn't been able to fight down the slightest vanity.

Which had vanished into thoughtfulness almost immediately when he remembered their earlier conversation.

Forever.

It was a concept that Gallifreyans had a slightly better familiarity with than humans – Time Lords even more so – and yet even they never bandied that word about casually. Even the most long-lived of Gallifreyans refrained from promising one another forever because of the inherent impossibility in keeping such an oath. He had only ever heard of one couple that had managed that, but they were the exception to the cosmic rule. Even his people died eventually, and while longevity was a gift of his species, forever wasn't.

Yet he got the distinct idea that not only had Rose promised him that without any idea of what she was doing, but his next self hadn't corrected her.

'Which begs the question of just how much brain damage I'm going to suffer the next regeneration,' he thought as he came to a stop in front of his current quarry.

"You're not Gorg," the little gobshite said, eyes narrowed and hand twitching toward the very obvious shape of a blaster by his hip.

"Gorg's ill. I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor who?"

"Just the Doctor," he said firmly, feeling a frequency in the air that was too distinct for human senses. Evidently the stasis field to disable Vortex travel was up and running. "And I'd like to get this business done with soon, yeah? Gotta be a million other time periods I'd like to be stuck in, and the nineties are far from any of 'em."

Lowell remained tense. "Gorg didn't contact me about someone else making the exchange."

"Well, he's having a bit of trouble talking out of his mouth right now," the Doctor pointed out coolly, careful to stick completely to the truth when he noticed that Lowell had the same distortion in the skin above his temple as Gertrude. Another truth assessor. "Funny how no one mentioned to him the possibility of rematerializing looking like a human jigsaw puzzle."

Lowell snorted with malicious humour. "Occupational hazard, mate. Primitive time travel's a bit like Russian Roulette. I take it you got off lucky, more or less?"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "We gonna make small talk, or can we get on with it?"

"I assume you're authorized to make the payment then?"

"Soon as I examine the merchandise," the Doctor replied, bringing out his sonic.

Lowell's hand moved to his blaster once again, pausing only when he saw that the Doctor hadn't brought out a recognizable weapon. "What's that?"

"Multipurpose tool," the Doctor answered, again truthfully. "Got settings for magnification and illumination so I can make sure I'm getting the genuine article. I'm sure you understand."

"Of course," Lowell said, keying something into his wrist watch. "Though, unless you've got an advanced understanding of engineering, you won't be able to tell much with your little torch there."

"Why do you think Gorg brought me?" the Doctor countered.

A holographic image appeared over their heads, showcasing machinery and plans that the Doctor instantly recognized as a true CETP. Pretending to examine a small component process, he keyed in the setting to reverse the effects of paralytic pulse frequency emitters and then remotely activated them.

There was a blue flash and Lowell's eyes went wide, but he didn't move. Not that he could of, paralyzed by his own device.

"Though I really don't need an advanced understanding of engineering to know that this device you're peddling could rip apart the reality. The reality that it's my job to protect," he went on darkly, pinning the paralyzed man with angry eyes. With every syllable, he felt more ice drip from his tone. "You Time Agents – or ex-Time Agents, or whatever you are – are always mucking about with what you don't understand. If the most superior time sensitive species in existence couldn't control Time, what the hell do you think gives you a better chance?"

He heard a noise behind him and recognized the tread of the two women arriving.

"He won't be going anywhere for the next ten minutes," he told them. "So whatever you've got planned to do, now would be the time."

"Hey there, Mal," Gertrude greeted, smiling unpleasantly. "Gotta say, you look a lot worse off than the last time I saw you. You know, when you set a quantum singularity in my partner's stomach and Vortexed out?"

Both Rose and the Doctor winced at the image that brought with it.

"I hope you two aren't gonna pull the sympathy card with this one," Gertrude warned, sizing them up.

The Doctor glanced at Lowell's face once more, seeing in his dark eyes hatred and blatant lack of remorse. He didn't even consider examining his thoughts telepathically. "No. Not this time."

"Good," Gertrude said, striding forward. She reached for Lowell's wristwatch and began to fiddle with it. In the meantime, Rose darted forward and hauled the large, weapon-like device from his back.

"_That_'s what he took?" the Doctor demanded as Rose slipped the strap around her own shoulders and turned it around to examine a small screen on the machine.

"It's not wha' it looks like," she told him simply.

"It looks like a portable cannon, is what it looks like."

"Oh-_kay_, maybe it's sor' of wha' it looks like," she winced. "But it's completely necessary to finding you, like I said."

"Rose…"

"I'm can' tell you, Doctor," she said, sounding miserable. "I can' risk you getting involved and causing a paradox. Not with things as…fragile as they are."

There was something in the timbre of her voice that stopped him from pursuing the matter, which was an indicator of just how serious it must have been.

"Whatever it is, it's leaking artron energy and loads of radiation," he said after a moment. "How many times have you used it?"

"More than a dozen."

This time he did start. "Are you mad?! You could be killed! Death by radiation poisoning isn't a good way to go, by anyone's standards!"

"There's more important out there than me righ' now, Doctor," Rose replied.

'There's nothing more important than you,' he almost said, without really knowing why. Luckily, Gertrude's voice interrupted.

"Malcolm Lowell," she announced, stepping away from the still paralyzed time-terrorist. "By the authority vested in my by the Time Agency, I sentence you spend the rest of your very, very short life learning exactly what a black hole feels like. The coordinates I programmed in there will get you _intimately _acquainted." She crossed her arms and smiled cruelly. "I'd give you a chance for last words, but by this point you've given up any right to those. Unless anyone here will speak for you?"

From the inquiring note in her voice, Gertrude likely expected him or Rose to speak up in the man's defense at the last moment.

Instead, he replied, "This is a mercy compared to what my people might've done to 'im."

Rose nodded silently as well, giving her tacit approval, and the three of them watched as one moment Malcolm Lowell was there, and then the next he wasn't.

"Well, that's over," Gertrude breathed. She eyed Rose for a long moment. "I know we said we would talk grounds for arrest, but something tells me you two are beyond my jurisdiction."

"You've got no idea how righ' you are," Rose countered archly.

Gertrude grinned. "Well, then I don't feel guilty in letting you off. _This time_. But if we ever meet again…"

"On tha' really, really remote chance, you just make sure you don' tell us you met us before," Rose retorted. "Or better yet, turn around and walk away."

The Time Agent laughed and turned to the Doctor. "Your girl's a real pistol, Doc. I hope you find each other again in your relative times."

It was a rather touching comment from the brash woman who had tortured him not hours before.

"And I really hope we don't meet again," the Doctor told her. "Don't much fancy Time Agents."

"Really?" Gertrude snorted, raising her wrist watch. "I never would have guessed."

And then she was gone.

They watched the spot where Gertrude had been for a long moment, before Rose suddenly laughed and reached for his hand. "I guess there's just one last thing to say then."

"Hm?"

She beamed at him, "Happy Christmas."

He blinked, and then smiled tightly at her. "Happy Christmas, Rose Tyler. Got everything you wanted this year?"

"Not yet, but I will," she told him seriously.

Just as seriously, he met her gaze unflinchingly. "And what do you want?"

"You mean other than finding you?" she asked softly, something passing across her face that made him swallow. A second later it was gone, replaced by an impish smile. "Well, a red bicycle for past-me wouldn' go amiss."

"Oi! Are you trying to con a Christmas gift outta me?"

"No, I'm preserving the timeline. Honest," she assured him. Then her expression turned serious. "You'll forget all of this, won't you?"

"I'll have to. Easy enough to do, though. Done it before. I'll set up a trigger to remember it when it's safe and the point of paradox has passed," he explained. "Say, somewhere around the time you do end up making it back to me."

He didn't mention the possibility of her never finding him again and the memory disappearing forever. There would be no point, really. He had known her for a day and already he was getting the idea that to Rose Tyler, 'impossible' was simply a word.

She eyed him with a conflicted expression, her bottom lip caught in her teeth. After a moment, she seemed to come to a decision, if the resigned set of her shoulders was anything to go by.

Before he could react, he found himself wrapped in the determined little human's embrace. He tensed at the unexpected overture.

"I missed you so much," he heard her whisper against his jumper, the arms she had wrapped around his neck tightening slightly in concert with her words. "Any you…but this you especially."

He felt an odd sort of satisfaction at that admission, and forced himself to relax a little. He patted her awkwardly on the back, unsure of what level of familiarity she was expecting and hoping his response was the correct one.

To both his relief and inexplicable consternation, she pulled away.

"The cannon'll be charged up by now," she whispered and began to step away from him. "Goodbye for now…my Doctor."

~*~ΘΣ~*~

The Doctor frowned down at the bright red bicycle, trying to figure out when and why on earth he had decided it was a good idea to go back in time to leave Rose Tyler a bloody Christmas present after she rejected him.

As if the whole trip to 1998 hadn't been a complete waste, apparently he was still unable to get the little blond ape out of his head. He'd ended up wandering up to hers and her mother's flat – just to look in on her, mind! – and had been confronted with a completely bare living room.

At Christmas.

No decorations and the place had looked a lot shabbier than he remembered it being in 2005.

Which had led to an hour long search of the TARDIS for something appropriate for a twelve year old (and what did one get a human child, anyhow?), the subsequent carrying of the very angular bike up the estate stairs and the quiet re-breaking-into of the estate flat.

And then a hastily scribbled, 'To Rose from Father Christmas' on the back of a receipt.

'She'd better bloody appreciate it, too,' he thought hotly. 'I've half a mind to go back and…'

It hit him, suddenly.

He hadn't told her that it travelled in time.

Thoughts of the bike were immediately pushed to the back of his mind by a blistering sense of hope.

Before he really thought it through, he was out of the apartment and back on the TARDIS, keying in the time and place. He was careful to make it a long enough time after he left that he wouldn't run into himself, but short enough that she'd likely still be there.

'The ships not called the ARDIS,' he thought almost giddily.

* * *

TBC

Apologies for the wait. School stuff got in the way. Reviews are greatly appreciated!


	4. Chapter Three: The Roof of the World

_**The Shortest Life  
**__**by ErtheChilde**_

* * *

"_Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change."_

_- Thomas Hardy_

* * *

**AN: **Again, a note on accents. I'm still operating under the 'POV character remains accentless' rule. Though, from now on, in non-POV Rose is very much the Rose we all know and love and thus has a more noticeable accent than she had in previous chapters – but seeing as how I don't want to write it all out so it's hard to read, I'm sticking to the minimum (occasional glottal stops, th-fronting, etc.). Same for Nine's accent.

* * *

**THREE**

"You're ruining them," the Doctor remarked conversationally, as Rose Tyler inundated her chips with a copious amount of malt vinegar.

"Says who?" she challenged, pushing the bottle away.

"Says me. Perfectly good chips and you've made 'em all…soggy and sour," he made a face. "You know that's a crime on at least a dozen different planets?"

"Yeah? Name one. Oh! No, wait, lemme guess! The Planet _Spud_," she mocked with a grin, before shoving a handful of the soggy potato wedges into her mouth.

They were sitting in a hole-in-the-wall chippy just off the business district. The place looked as though it hadn't seen a health code inspection since the late nineteen-seventies, but that hadn't stopped Rose from dragging him inside and ordering up two baskets of chips for them.

The surprising thing was that they were actually quite good.

The Doctor allowed himself to observe in a moment of revolted fascination, before replying, "Nah, Spud's a system, not a planet. And what'd be the point of rattling off names to you? You wouldn't recognize any."

"Well, you could always take me to one."

"Could do, if you fancy acidic atmospheres and carnivorous bipedal plants," he replied easily. "Tho', maybe that's why soggy chips're outlawed in the first place."

"An' what makes you such a con…conoss–"

"Connoisseur?"

"Tha's the one. Wha' makes you one of those over chips? Don' aliens eat grass or metal or linoleum?"

"Do I look like a rodent?" he deadpanned, deliberately grabbing a chip from his own blessedly vinegar-free basket and stuffing it in his mouth.

"Not really. More like tha' character from _The Muppet Show_. You know, the blue one?"

"Oi!"

But there was no malice in either of their words, and she was grinning at him in such a peculiar and charming way, tongue poking out from between her teeth, that he couldn't help but grin back.

It amazed him, this easy and familiar banter between them. He felt as though he had known her his whole life, instead of barely two days. It was intriguing and frightening and absolutely fantastic all at the same time.

Considering he'd already almost bollocksed the whole thing up.

Brand new companion, wide-eyed with innocence and bursting with excitement at the possible wonders time and space had to offer, and what had he done?

Brought her to watch her planet blow up.

Nine hundred years of phone-box travel and he still couldn't come up with a concrete reason why he'd done that. Of all the possible first trips he could think of – from the glass pyramid at San Kloon to the terrible beauty of Women Wept, and he'd brought her to watch the sun expand and roast her world.

Had he been trying to make a point to himself and her? Trying to get the destruction of a world they both held dear out of the way so that nothing could ever seem as horrible? Was it because he had wanted her to understand what had happened to him? Had he wanted her, on some level, to know what it was like to watch your home reduced to rubble?

If that was the case, it was more than selfish – it was self-defeating. Almost as if he was trying to get her to leave him alone.

Which made no sense, considering he had asked her twice to come with him. He had wanted nothing more than to show her the stars almost from the second the elevator doors closed and she started in on the questions.

The look on her face at her first sight of the aliens on Platform One, as the realization hit her and her world view began to change, had been breath-taking. He always loved that first taste of wonder that emanated from a new companion as they stepped into a whole new world, but hers had made his hearts speed up and the smile on his face feel more genuine than manic for the first time in ages. Because of this, he had felt it all the more keenly when that sense of wonder and enjoyment in her had altered, and had been replaced by a sense of overwhelming uncertainty.

He should have expected it really, the surprise and slight xenophobia, but she had so far been taking everything so bloody well that he had been caught up short.

Oh well, no companion was perfect, and even with the mercurial moods and sharp tongue, Rose Tyler was still one of the better ones.

Sure, she was quick to anger, like a child, and still had the self-righteous, entitled air of a human from her era – that much had been clear at her indignation of having the TARDIS 'muckin' about' in her head.

But she was smart!

Dozens of companions, he'd had, and none of them had ever asked about the translation circuits. Everyone naturally assumed the rest of the universe spoke English, but not Rose Tyler. And she didn't shy away from hard subjects, either. He had been amazed at how easily she had wrapped her head around the concept of her mother being both dead and alive at the same time. Most humans had a problem with such a…Tralfmadorian way of thinking, to use old Kurt's words.

More than that, she was brave. Not only in the spur of the moment, swinging on a chain over a vat of molten plastic, but in the face of something much more dangerous. When offered a glimpse of the darkness within him, she hadn't blinked. He'd lost his temper with her and she hadn't even flinched; in fact, she'd yelled back at him, demanded point blank who he was and he had somehow known that it was more than the haphazard question so laughingly shrugged off throughout his entire life. She hadn't wanted a name, she had wanted the measure of him.

And he'd told her. Or, near enough, anyhow.

Told her about who he was, now, in this moment with the desperate hope that it would be enough, because he couldn't go back to being the man he had been before.

He wondered now if he had damned her with even that tiny scrap of knowledge.

He was always getting people killed – hadn't that been made clear with Jabe? The clever, sympathetic tree would have made a good companion had she lived – had she stayed far away from him.

Death inarguably followed wherever he went, and he had already doomed so many friends and family to Her clutches in the past. Rose had already almost died twice in the same day, just for her connection to him. She had gotten her first taste of what death looked like up close – real death, not the kind where you find out an hour later that there was just some misunderstanding and your idiot boyfriend's been alive the whole time. She had seen the charred ruins of the observation deck and smelled the burning flesh of the people that had been killed.

Amazingly, she hadn't looked away.

More amazingly, she had still wanted to save that murdering flap of skin in the end. The same one responsible for her nearly being vaporized not ten minutes before.

For the life of him he couldn't decide whether her inherent forgiveness made her stupid or enlightened.

And even after all of that – she'd been grief-stricken and wrong-footed and an absolute emotional mess – she had still taken his hand.

She had let him lead her away, back to the TARDIS and back to her time, where she hadn't asked him to take her but where he had thought she would want to be. He'd been fully prepared to bring her home – to drop her off and let her stay in a safe spot while he moved on.

But then she had looked around the throngs of people, and he could practically see her sizing the world up with new eyes.

And he had known, suddenly, that she was one of the ones who would never go back.

It was a heartening and heart-breaking realization all at once, and he couldn't help the niggling feeling that he had ruined her.

So he had told her.

Told her what he hadn't told more than one other, told her about Gallifrey being gone. He hadn't told her everything, but enough that she knew that he was utterly alone.

And instead of mumbling 'sorry' as anyone else in the universe might, or avoiding his gaze when they realized they had just stumbled on to an extremely delicate subject, she had ducked her head and gazed at him from beneath her heavy mascara and told him, "There's me."

Which was nonsense and insignificant and presumptuous and how could a pithy little ape think that would make up for everything he had lost?

Except…in a way, somehow it felt like it did.

It felt more than an arbitrary offer of a shoulder to lean on. It was like she recognized what his past meant, without truly understanding it – like she knew that he was lonely and weak and doomed to never again have anyone who would understand, yet she was still offering to be that someone or at least try to be that someone. All without him having divulged more than a glancing hint of what he had done.

The enormity of her offer, and whether she knew what she was offering or not, preoccupied him. Even finding out how dangerous his life was, she had managed to brush it off with a nervous joke.

As she sat across from him now, chewing thoughtfully, he tried not to think about the fact that she had never answered his question…of whether she wanted to go home.

Seemingly sensing his attention, she cocked her head to one side and asked, "So what are you a doctor of?"

"Oh, everything and nothing," he answered cheerfully. "Whatever captures my fancy – ping-pong, clothes-folding, cheese-making…"

"So you're not a _proper_ doctor, then."

"Sure I am! Even studied medicine all formal-like in the nineteenth century," he told her, pretending offence. "Been helping you lot figure out the latest life saving techniques for ages. Cardio pulmonary resuscitation? That was me. Gave Pete Safar and Jim Elam the idea for it. Sort of had to, though – I was the only one able to breathe at the time." He thumped his chest. "Respiratory bypass."

"Wha's tha'?"

"Means I can go without breathing for longer than a human can."

Rose's eyebrows rose in amazement. "'Cos you're alien."

"Yeah."

"But if you're alien, how comes you look like a human?"

The question was posed with the innocent curiosity of someone genuinely interested to hear the answer, rather than the wary suspicion he sometimes encountered when people found out he didn't share their species.

"On the contrary – you'll find you lot look like me," he returned smugly.

"You're so full of it!"

"Nah, it's true! My people were around trillions of years before yours."

It was a wonder that it didn't hurt as much to say that as it usually did.

"Hang on, you're saying you come first? Then what's up wif Darwin and evolution then?" Rose wanted to know. "I remember tha' much from school…"

"It's a bit complicated for a primate like you to understand –"

"Oi!"

" – but basically mix in life spores and ancestor cells and cosmic luck, and you've got literally billions of different species that got their basic genetic blueprint from us."

"So other than the breathing fing…you're jus' like us?" Rose asked.

"Never said that, did I? Blueprints are just guidelines. My physiology's vastly superior to yours. Imitations are never quite as good as the original."

"Oh, yeah? Tha' why your hands always feel like you stuck 'em in a snow bank?" she teased. "I'm surprised I haven' got frostbite off you."

"Wear gloves," he suggested.

Rose sniggered, and leaned back, cocking her head to one side. "So what else is differen'? D'you glow or shoot spikes from your wrists or anyfing?"

He shot her a pitying look. "Read a lot of tabloids, do you?"

"Nah, my mate Keisha made me watch a bunch of sci-fi films."

"If you believe any of those, I wash my hands of you," he told her, then considered, "Though there's something to be said for Lucas, on occasion."

"So no tentacles or extra eyes hidden away?"

He shrugged. "Got two hearts."

"You never!"

"No, really, see?"

And before he really thought it through, he had reached across the table, seized the hand that wasn't dripping with grease and vinegar and pulled her forward to press her palm against the left side of his chest. After ensuring she felt the slow, rhythmic beat there, he moved it to the right.

The gesture seemed to surprise her, but it was nothing on the sudden sense of wonder he felt. Although he had meant for it to be a casual demonstration, there was something significant in the feel of her palm against the barrier of his jumper. As seemed to be the case whenever he held her hand, warmth spread from her palm and through him in a way that had nothing to do with body temperature.

For her part, Rose momentarily stared at the spot where her hand rested, open-mouthed.

"Blimey! Anyfing else you've got two of?" she asked weakly, and then her cheeks flushed with colour and she pulled away.

He ignored the part of him that immediately mourned the loss of contact. "Most of what you've only got one of."

Something passed across her face, like she wanted to ask another question, and her cheeks went even darker and she cleared her throat.

"So, tha' telepathic field…the one your ship makes," she began, clearly changing the subject. "Tha' mean you're talking alien at me righ' now?"

"No, I'm talking English."

"You actually know English?"

"I know over five billion languages, 'course I know English," he scoffed.

"And what, you learned it in the North, did you?"

"'Course not. I learned it on Iwa – tiny little planet thousands of light-years away from here. Got them out of a spot of trouble with some fox-people…"

"So they spoke like they was Mancs?"

"Bit fixated, aren't you?" he asked her conversationally.

She shrugged unrepentantly. "Jus' trying to understand."

He nodded approvingly at that.

"Well, I don't always speak it the same. This time around, I knew someone up in Salford, liked the way he spoke, so I sort of adopted it."

He didn't especially feel like going into the intricacies of the genetic lottery that was regeneration right now. In fact, if he had his way, Rose Tyler would be a long distant memory before he ever had to explain the concept to anyone ever again.

"So you could talk like me?"

"Fink I coul', yeah, if I fel' like i'," he offered, slipping into an exaggerated facsimile of her own London accent. She let out a delighted laugh at that, and he switched again, this time to a Scottish brogue, "An' I spent a decent stretch o' time soundin' like I came from Dunoon."

"Tha's amazin'," she said. "You actually sound like it."

"Well, I would, wouldn't I?" he countered, settling back into the accent he had regenerated with; it felt more natural on his tongue. "Speak a language long enough, it's easy to become multidialectal. Besides, whatever minute trace of native accent I might still 'ave, the TARDIS translation circuit eliminates."

"Why's it do tha'?"

"To make people blend in. Never know when you'll end up on some planet where you can be executed for improper pronunciation."

"Migh' be useful for me, then – I'm horrid at pronouncing foreign words," she confided. "I can' even do a believable Bond villain. Mickey'd always make fun of me."

Something passed over her face at the mention of her boyfriend, and suddenly worried she might insist on checking in on him, he hurriedly distracted her. "Well, go on then."

"What?"

"Show me. Bet I'm a better judge than anyone else."

"No, I can'," she demurred. "S'really horrid."

"You brought it up. Wouldn't've done if you didn't want to show off."

"Jus' because _you_ like to pretend like you're so impressive..."

"Thought we established I _am_ so impressive?"

"Git."

He folded his arms across his chest and shot her a measured glance, even though he knew there wasn't really anything he could threaten her with to make her comply. He was the one who wanted her around, after all.

But still, she groaned theatrically and rolled her eyes. Glancing around to ensure the chippy was still as empty as it had been since they got there, she announced _sotto voce_, "_Vee haff vays off makink hyu tok_!"

The roar of laughter that escaped him was almost as surprising as the discovery that she was, indeed, _that_ bad. The laugh started in the vicinity of his belly and rolled upwards, sending his body into paroxysms of surprised delight.

Rose was staring at him, mouth parted in surprise – or somewhat pleased indignation, he wasn't sure – at his reaction. It made him laugh harder for some reason.

Until realization hit him and he stopped mid chuckle.

He hadn't laughed since Gallifrey. He had been sure he had forgotten how.

How could there be anything that he found funny anymore? Especially something so tried and contrived as a bad impersonation?

She seemed to sense the sudden realization, because her expression sobered. There was a brief flash of sympathetic curiosity across her face, and then she cleared her throat and leaned forward, clasping her hands on the dirty Formica table.

"So…to business, then?"

ΘΣ

The wrong-footed expression on his face was a comforting change from the pinched, hollow one that had suddenly stopped his uproarious laughter seconds before, and Rose felt a measure of relief at that.

She'd only been with him for what felt like a day, but already the occasional flashes of grief and pain that she saw in his eyes made her stomach clench unpleasantly. His laughter had been such a pleasant surprise, more genuine than the manic, fixed grin he had been wearing almost since they met.

The equally caught-out, "What?" was comforting as well.

"Well, the way I figure, if I'm gonna travel with you, there's some stuff I need to know first," she went on.

His expression underwent yet another change, not completely closed-off, but more than a little bit guarded. "That a fact?"

"Well, yeah, any sensible girl interviews a possible travel mate before committing," she told him, mock-seriously. "Gotta make sure you can keep up with me, yeah?"

The guarded look faded to a grin, and he raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so now I'm to be _your_ companion."

"Yep."

"Disregard the fact it's my ship we'll be travelin' with."

Her tongue poked out behind her teeth again. "Minor technicality."

"So all the questions since we got 'ere, that wasn't any of the 'stuff you need to know'?" he queried.

"Nope," she grinned. "That was just me making conversation over lunch. Being all polite."

"Oh, of course," he granted, amusement flickering through blue eyes.

She was phrasing it all as a bit of a joke, mindful of his frame of mind, but to be honest, Rose was intensely curious about the man – alien – before her.

It had hit her all at once on Platform One when Raffalo had asked her where she was from. She hadn't been able to answer without explaining him, and trying to do that had suddenly underscored the fact that she didn't know anything about him.

'A mysterious stranger says he's an alien and instead of running screaming for the hills I hitch a lift with him,' she thought chidingly.

Oh, she had told him 'no' the first time, conditioned since childhood by being told not to offer lifts from strangers. But even then as the words had slipped past her lips, while Mickey clung to her waist and gave her an excuse for her refusal, she had felt her heart sink with the realization that she was making the biggest mistake of her life.

Which was why when he had inexplicably come back eighteen seconds later, she hadn't bothered thinking it through. She had kissed Mickey goodbye and run into the blue box.

Never mind that this mysterious Doctor might eat people (which she was very relieved wasn't the case) or could be some kind of interplanetary slaver specializing in humans or any number of horrible other things.

She'd just gone.

And then she'd watched the Earth explode and nearly got burned up by the sun, all of which had been sad and frightening and humbling and –

And she had known in that moment that whatever her life had once been, it was different now. She couldn't just forget all of that – the wonder, the fear, the staggering realization that the world was oh-so-much bigger than she had ever imagined herself understanding.

She never wanted to go back.

When they had returned to Earth, he had told her what had happened to his people and how he was alone and had given her a choice to stay home or keep travelling with him. Something within her had clenched at the thought of him leaving and she had the sudden presentment that there was no way she could just stay behind.

She never would be able to again.

She didn't know anything about this strange, sad, wonderful alien, but she had known with a startling flash of insight that her place was beside him.

It was mildly terrifying to be that sure of something, especially considering she had never been absolutely sure of anything in her nineteen years.

Except, she had come close once before – and that experience with Jimmy Stone had conditioned within her an inherent defensiveness of ever letting any man – be he human or alien – have that much power over her ever again.

And so she had delayed her response. Much as she wanted to tell the Doctor right away that she would travel with him, she wanted it to be on her terms and without coming off like she was desperate.

Which she sort of was.

"I don't see how goin' through with this interrogation matters in the big scheme of things."

"Sure it matters! If we're gonna travel together, wouldn't you want to know about me?" Rose inquired.

"Nah. Takes all the fun out of discoverin' it for myself."

"You can't just traipse around space and time with someone you only just met."

"Can too – 'ave done," he pointed out. "Within the last hour, or weren't you payin' attention?"

"Well, yeah," she rolled her eyes. "And that was a roaring success, that was. But what if it turns out we don't get on? People get sick of each other all the time when they go on holiday and by then it's too late to do anything about it."

"Then I bring you 'ome," he shrugged. "No 'arm done, I can bring you back the same time you left. No one but you'd know the difference."

She was momentarily side-tracked. The implications of time travel had made a minor impression on her before, being what sold her on coming with him in the first place, but the idea that she could literally travel throughout the galaxy for weeks on end and then come back without anyone knowing the difference opened up so many possibilities.

On the heels of that thought was the sudden pit that opened up in her stomach over the idea that he might decide he didn't like travelling with her and drop her back home someday.

'All the more reason to make sure we get on,' she decided, not feeling the least bit sorry over her less than altruistic thoughts. Other than the fact that she happened to like the bloke on short acquaintance, he was the key to her seeing more than just what the London Tube could show her.

"Still," she spoke up, trying to cover up her momentary mental lapse. She traced her fingers across the greasy table where someone had carved the words 'Bad Wolf' with a penknife. "I think I'd like to know a bit more about you than the fact you come first in jiggery-pokery and you eat chips."

He gave an exaggerated put-open sigh. "Alright, you get three questions."

"Three?" she repeated. "Why three?"

"Well, it's always three, isn't it?" he pointed out. "Fairy tales, quests, luck…it's a powerful number in the entire galaxy. Noblest of all digits, an' all that. Well, except nine, but that's a whole different story."

"You just don't want to answer more than three."

"Well, we'd be 'ere all day if we did that," he scoffed. "Places to go and people to see and all. Whole point of travelin' is not sittin' around _talkin_' about travelin'."

"Okay, okay," Rose interrupted, having a feeling he might go into a long, lecturing rant if she didn't stop him. "Three questions.'

He offered her a look that told her he thought she was utterly mad. Coming from him, she had a feeling she ought to be insulted. "Go on."

"Hold on, would you?"

"Time's a'wastin'."

"I'm trying to think of what to ask!"

"Oh, well, we'll definitely be here all day then."

"You're gonna get a slap!"

"Violent species, you primates."

She narrowed her eyes in calculation as she settled on the first. "Is your name actually 'Doctor'?" she asked. "I mean, is that what your parents called you?"

"'Course not," he answered cheerily. "It's the name I chose. My real name's about thirty-nine syllables long and without decades of study a 'uman couldn't even begin to pronounce it."

"Really? Oh, well, that I've definitely got to hear," she grinned at him.

To her surprise his expression became guarded and sad once more.

"You can't know it," he told her flatly.

"Why not?"

"Cos it's my business," he retorted. "Can't just tell anyone."

Rose felt mildly insulted at that. "It's just a name!"

"It's _my_ name," he pronounced, standing firm. "It's not some random word that got picked out of a baby book or chosen 'cos your mum 'appened to be standin' next to a garden one day."

Rose frowned at him and crossed her arms, "Mine at least makes sense, though. Yours isn't really a name, is it? It's a job."

"No, the job's based on a title. Which is based on a word. Which is based on my name."

Rose blinked. "How's that work?"

"Oh, I helped out a bunch of Latini near the Tiber river a couple thousand years ago in a peninsula far away," he explained. "Nice people. Really liked stallions and fire, usually together…Any'ow, I went back to visit a few centuries past and found out they'd named a verb after me. _Docere_. It's where your word 'doctor' comes from.

He nodded his head in his self-satisfied way, although Rose wasn't sure that self-satisfaction was with the story, or evading her question.

'Probably that last one,' she thought, and sighed. "Fine, you don't want to tell me, that's alright. I mean, we only just met and –"

"It's nothin' to do with trust, if that's what you're on about," he told her pointedly. "I already trust you implicitly, Rose Tyler. But even if I wanted to trust you with this, I couldn't."

His gaze went unfocussed, like he was seeing something in the distance that was invisible to her.

"Where I come from, your name is your life story…it's given to you at birth and prophecies everythin' you're gonna do in your entire existence. Sure, even 'uman words 'ave power – but imagine a word in a language that somehow captures everythin' – everythin' you are, everythin' you were, everythin' you will ever be and everythin' you could 'ave been. Imagine a word that encompasses your inner darkness and light, your gifts and your shortcomings, everythin' that you will ever love and ever despise, everythin' you'll do…all of that, in one word. One name." His eyes snapped suddenly to hers, capturing her attention so that she couldn't look away. "Now imagine that power in the grasp of someone with bad intent. Someone like Cassandra."

Rose shivered at the timbre of his voice, which for a moment sounded every one of the nine hundred years he had lived. She didn't completely understand what he was talking about, but the magnitude of his words impressed how serious the matter was.

"So…you can never tell anyone? Not ever?" she asked, her voice small. She was struck by an incredible wave of pity for the Doctor just then.

"Once there would've been an exception if I…but that's no longer possible," he said, dismissive and then suddenly sat up straighter, the intense look on his face becoming the manic grin once more. "Well, s'pose it's my turn now?"

Rose started, brought up short by the sudden change in mood. "I thought you said this was a waste of time?"

"It is, but it might as well be an equally weighted waste of time. If you get to ask me random, useless questions, I can do the same."

"Well, when you put it like that," she deadpanned, crossing her arms in imitation of what she considered his 'expectant-and-unimpressed-alien' stance.

He seemed to deliberate for a moment, and then asked, "D'you take plasters off slowly or rip 'em quick?"

Her jaw fell slightly, having not really expected that. "What?"

"You 'eard me," he said cheerfully.

"What's that to the price of tea, then?"

"Doesn't matter. It's my question, are you gonna answer it or not?"

She shook her head, feeling her mouth tugging upward despite herself. "I do 'em quick. I don't like being in pain longer than I have to."

"Good rule to 'ave," he allowed.

She wanted him to elaborate on why he thought that was important, but stopped herself from asking.

As interested as she was, she didn't trust him not to pull a fast one and try to use her curiosity as a means of wasting another question. Besides, during the course of their light-hearted banter she had thought up another good one.

"Out of everywhere you've ever been in the universe, where's your favourite place to visit?" she asked. She had wanted to ask what his favourite place in the universe was, but given the destruction of his home, that might have been too tactless a query.

"Earth," he said immediately.

Rose raised an eyebrow, surprised. She had expected something else with an exotic or unpronounceable name far across the galaxy. "Really?"

"Oh, yeah, brilliant planet, Earth – so colourful and diverse in terms of species and geography," he told her honestly.

"But you brought me to watch it blow up," she pointed out, and she caught a look almost akin to shame flicker across his features.

"'Least now you know you can literally survive the end of the world," he pointed out reasonably, and in a way that suggested it was the most apology she was going to get out of him.

"There's that," she allowed.

"B'sides, earth culture and values've been carried by 'umans and other sentient species to the far reaches of the universe, you know? You lot've so much personality and ingenuity, despite your 'andicaps, and you're always reachin' for the stars – and with the exception of folk like that psychotic flap of skin, you learn from your mistakes. Not a lot of species are able to do that."

"I'm sure there are loads of planets out there that've done that, though. And they've got to be a lot prettier or more interesting than here," Rose remarked, unable to believe that in such a large universe the Doctor's favourite planet happened to be hers.

"Oh, sure there are – but do any of 'em have cows?" he challenged. "Can't exactly call a planet my favourite if there's nowhere to pick up a bottle of milk."

Rose let out a startled laugh, unable to tell if he was being serious or if he just didn't want to tell her the real reason that Earth was his favourite. "Oh, of course not."

"Was even exiled to Earth once when I was younger," he went on. "Got a proper 'uman job and a car and everythin'."

"You're having me on," she accused.

"Why would I do that?" he asked, sounding so honestly confused that she believed him.

"Who exiled you?" she blurted out. "And why would they exile you to a place you actually liked?"

His expression tightened. "That's two questions, and it's not even your turn."

"Sorry," she said, reigning herself in. She made a gesture for him to continue.

"If you were to 'ave any song stuck in your 'ead for the rest of your life, what would it be?" he asked, somewhat exultantly.

Rose opened her mouth to suggest her current favourite song, and then abruptly thought better of it. "I don't know…anything, as long as it's not a song I actually like."

That made him stare at her. "Why's that?"

"Well, if it were a song I liked, eventually I'd get sick of it," she explained. "I might even start to hate it as much as I used to love it. At least if I started out with something I didn't ike to begin with, I wouldn't feel like I lost something if I started to hate it."

This time it was the Doctor who was looking at her with a slightly open mouth, but when she stopped talking he actually beamed at her. "Well, never thought of it that way. Well done!"

She raised an eyebrow. "What, was that the right answer?"

"Don't be daft –there's no such thing as a right answer, only the best answer," he corrected her. "Speakin' of answers, I've got one left to give, so go on and ask your last question."

Rose didn't want to waste her last question, but given the Doctor's previous evasive answers and her inability to narrow down the literally hundreds that kept cropping up at the back of her mind, she decided to settle on a relatively harmless, inane one. "Favourite colour, then?"

It was his turn to give her a funny look. "What'choo want to know that for?"

"It's just something you ask people when you're getting to know 'em."

"Yeah, well, on some of the other planets I've been, divulgin' your favourite colour can get you killed or sold into slavery or thrown off a mountain," he told her. "'Ow do I know what you're gonna do with that information? S'rather like leavin' your NI number out for just anyone to look at."

"So you're not gonna answer the question, then?"

"Said it was other planets, didn't I? Seein' as how we're on Earth, I s'pose it's safe enough," he answered decidedly. "Though how that'd affect who you wanna see the universe with, I've no idea."

She felt her cheeks redden in embarrassment, the question having been the first to come to mind. She'd only thought of it because she remembered reading a magazine article a few days ago – 'More like a lifetime ago,' she thought in disbelief – with Shareen about what one's favourite colour said about a person. It was vapid and stupid and good for no more than a laugh, but from the somewhat condescending look he was offering her, she suddenly wanted to prove that it merited being one of her three questions.

"Well, it's all about psychology, innit?" she argued, trying to sound like she knew what she was talking about. "Colours can tell a lot about someone's personality."

"If you say so," he smirked. "Katamelphine."

"Bless you."

"Nah, s'my favourite colour."

"That's not a colour."

"Sure it is. Just not one you lot can see."

"And by 'you lot', you mean humans."

"Yup."

"So what's it look like?"

"You wouldn't be able to imagine. Outside your visual colour spectrum." He was grinning again and she realized he was actually having fun teasing her. "But go on, then, tell me what it says about me."

Rose set her jaw. "It tells me you're interesting and clever and cryptic and a bit of a stubborn tosser."

Rather than look insulted, his grin widened. "What ever 'appened to not insultin' the designated driver?"

"Well, considering my last designated driver let a little blue man spit on me and a royal tree call me 'prostitute', I'm think I'm gonna revise that rule."

"Oi, you're touchy," he rolled his eyes. She stuck out her tongue. "My go then?"

"Yeah."

"Last question, then."

"Alright."

He offered her the most scrutinizing stare yet. "Do you like pears?"

She blinked. "Are you serious?"

"It's as legitimate a question as your last one," he maintained, his inflection giving her no indication of how he felt about it one way or another.

"I guess," she rolled her eyes. "And no, I don't."

He beamed. "Fantastic!"

"Are you gonna tell me what your questions had to do with anything?" Rose asked.

"Nope!"

"Why?"

"'Cos that's the way it is," he answered decidedly and jumped to his feet. "Now that we've got all the useless bits out of the way, let's get back to it." He held out a hand across the table. "Shall we?"

"Where are we going?" she asked, even as she took his hand and let him lead her from the chippy.

"Up to you," he told her. "Where do you want to go?"

ΘΣ

He watched her brow furrow in concentration, a stark contrast to the disbelieving optimism that had been there the first time he asked her where she wanted to go. He could also detect the faintest mixture of hesitance there, which he attributed to their less than idea first trip.

Despite his own preference for high-energy adventures, it was suddenly imperative that he be able to show her the wonderful instead of just the dangerous. Also, given the fact she had just watched her planet blow up, perhaps staying close by for the next visit might reassure her somewhat.

"We could keep it local this time, if you want," he suggested. "Like I said, Earth's fantastic. You mentioned Darwin before - we could go see the Galapagos Islands. That's where he came up with all his ideas, with a little help from yours truly. Or we could visit Darwin himself. Fiend for backgammon, old Charlie."

"Nah, I don' really like board games," Rose told him. "I want to see something…old, and beautiful and…and mysterious…"

"Well, that narrows it down," he drawled, considering her request. "We could go see the Great Wall of China. Good place for non-life-threatening running, but where's the fun in that?"

She laughed. "You're cracked."

"Best to stick to the modern era, though," he mused as they headed back through the packed lunchtime crowds to where the TARDIS was parked. "I don't think you'd enjoy watching it be built. Dull, slow work there. Also, a bit morbid. Millions of bodies buried in its foundations."

Rose made a face. "Yeah, tha's a bit…disgusting."

"Maybe another day," he allowed. "If you're looking for pretty, we could head to Machu Picchu. Past or present, it's always a sight. Though, if you're keen on the past, better be prepared to possibly end up a human sacrifice. Learned a lot from Exxilons, that lot."

"The who?"

"Ancient species – older than the Earth. Sort of like walking pieces mud or tree bark. Believed the biggest compliment you could pay someone was sacrificing them to the gods."

"Um, pass," Rose chuckled uncertainly as the Doctor unlocked the TARDIS door and they slipped inside. She glanced at the people moving around them and something seemed to occur to her. "How comes no one noticed the big blue box in the middle of the way? Or us going inside?"

He grinned at her question. "Perception filter."

"What?"

"It means the TARDIS can direct attention away from itself. People look at it, but they don't actually see it, 'cos the filter gets inside their heads and telepathically tells them it's not there."

Rose frowned. "More things getting in my head, then?"

"Well, it's not in your head now," he pointed out. "You know the TARDIS is there, so it won't work on you, will it?"

"But it did before, righ'? Before I knew about the TARDIS?"

Deciding to head off the inevitable rant about the very human preoccupation with personal boundaries, he closed the door behind them and headed to the centre console. "How about Rapa Nui? Or, Easter Island as you'd know it. That's mysterious. Well, for you lot anyhow."

"You're rubbish at changing the subject," she informed him, crossing her arms;

"Am not. Champion subject changer, me. Got awards for it and everything."

She rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth were tugging upward again and he knew she was going to let him get away with it.

He reached for the nearest lever. "So – come to a decision about where you want to go yet?"

"I dunno," she murmured, apologetic. "All those places sound brilliant, but…I don' know anyfing about 'em."

"That's the whole point of visiting," he pointed out. "So you can learn first-hand."

"I know, but…" she trailed off, and shook her head and seemed to want to try a different track. "Aren't they all places anyone wif a ton of cash could get to see? I wanna go see somethin' that shouldn' even be possible to see. Where it shouldn' matter if you've got money or not. Or…somewhere tha' I've actually heard of that I don' have to be a genius to enjoy."

The Doctor found himself puzzled by the turn of the conversation, wondering where his latest companion's inexplicable uncertainty had suddenly appeared from. Rather than comment on it, however, he busied himself with thinking of a destination to fit her requirements. After all, if anyone in the universe could recognize a touchy subject in the offing, it was him.

"Right, then!" he announced, reaching for the nearest lever. "I've got an idea of where to go."

"Where?"

"It's a surprise," he told her smugly.

"Why do I get the feeling I'm gonna start dreading those words?" she teased, reaching over to brace herself against one of the console rails as the dematerialization sequence began.

Pretending to be miffed, he decided not to tell her she needn't have bothered, considering they were only making a localized jump.

Several seconds later, the Time Rotor came to a rest and he stepped away from the console. "Right. We're here."

"Past or future?" Rose wanted to know.

"Neither," he told her smugly. "Present. Outside it's March 6, 2005 – though, I should tell you now you might not want to go more than ten meters from the TARDIS."

"Why?"

"It's as far as the Force Field Generator can beam a protective field to regulate oxygen and temperature," he told her. "Go much farther and you'll either faint or get frostbite. Or both."

"So wherever we are is cold?" she ventured.

"Freezing. About thirty below out there right now," he agreed. "But like I said, stick within the immediate area and you'll be fine."

"What, did you bring me to the North Pole or something?" she joked.

"Go and see!"

With a curious smile, she hurried down the ramp and pulled open the door. Brilliant light shone into the TARDIS, momentarily making her little more than a silhouette until his eyes adjusted, but it didn't affect his hearing. He heard the sharp intake of breath as she stared outside in amazement, moments before stepping out of the doorway.

He followed out at a more leisurely yet quick pace, intent on seeing the look on her face.

Outside the TARDIS, the horizon stretched endlessly in every direction. The sky was at its bluest, slowly darkening to the pitch black of space barely forty kilometres above them. Hundreds of snow-capped mountains surrounded them on all sides, some surrounded by thick cloud cumulous, others bare to the elements. The sound of the wind roaring past them was like the rumble of a jet engine, but the TARDIS' force field kept it from reaching them. The smell and taste of ozone permeated the area, and snow crunched beneath their feet as they moved farther from the door.

Directly within their ten meter circumference was the highest point on the surface where they stood, decorated with various scraps of coloured material that were half-frozen, half tied together in a makeshift garland. While these testaments to human achievement flapped wildly in the wind, only the lightest of breezes permeated the TARDIS shield.

"Mount Everest," the Doctor announced. "Highest point above sea level – well, highest agree-upon point above sea level. There's an argument to be made for Chimborazo or Mauna Kea, but you can't deny everyone's heard of Everest. Either way it means you, Rose Tyler, are now standing at the very top of the world."

"This is Mount Everest," she repeated slowly, like she was trying to make sure. She turned slowly around to take in the panoramic view of the surrounding mountain ranges, moving with a sleepwalker's dreaming slowness.

"Yep."

"This is Mount Everest, and I'm standing at the top," she continued, more to herself than him. "Me. A shop girl from Peckham." She turned then to look at him, her eyes shining with awe. "This is amazing."

The astonishment and admiration in her tone buoyed him up.

"Have been known to do amazin' from time to time," he boasted.

Her mouth quirked at that, and she looked back out on the perilous slopes of the giant mountain. "Won' people climbing up notice we're here? Or are we perception filtered as well?"

"The TARDIS is, we're not," he told her. "Not that it would really matter. Not many climbers in March. Weather's too unpredictable – see the storm clouds over there?" He gestured at a dark patch of cumulous off in the far distance. "Even if anyone did feel like braving this place so early in the season, we're just outside of the safe climbing window. No one comes up here later than two o'clock in the afternoon during the regular season, never mind now."

Rose made a noise of understanding and shook her head, obviously still floored by the scene before her. Even the Doctor had to admit it was one of the nicest views he'd ever seen, and that was saying something.

"Oh, I've got to get a picture of this!" Rose declared after a while, digging out her phone. "This is really brilliant." She paused, shooting him a sidelong glance. "I can take pictures, yeah? S'not like anyone will believe 'em. They'll probably think they're faked. It shouldn' matter, should it? I know they're real, and that's all that matters, yeah?"

The Doctor smiled indulgently throughout this excited ramble and reached for the phone. "Want me to get one of you at the top?"

"Yeah!" she squealed, shoving the device into his hand and scrambling toward the summit.

"Watch it!" he called after her when her trainers skid a little on the snow and ice. "Just 'cos you're protected from the cold and lack of oxygen doesn't mean you can't still slip!"

At the summit she turned and posed, flashing a V-sign and grinning with the same tongue-touched smile that was rapidly becoming a favourite of his. He spared a moment to snap the shot of her, and then she was bounding back to him, once again ignoring his warning as she slid down the icy, snowy rocks.

She took the phone, examining the shot of herself with an expression of glee. Then, before he could react, she had caught him in a tight clinch and was angling the phone at them.

"Oi!" he protested as the camera shutter snapped. "What's that all about, then?"

"Well, you're here too," she pointed out.

"I don't do photographs," he grumbled.

"Yeah, righ'," she teased. "I've seen plenty of photos of you."

"Oh, you have, have you?" he challenged.

"Yeah!" Rose answered, and then proceeded to tell him all about a man named Clive Finch, who she had run into while trying to learn what she could about him. As she spoke, her hand found his.

So joined they watched the sprawling vista for a while, even as the shadows became darker and the sun began to dip toward the horizon. It was only as the sound of the wind battering against the TARDIS exterior and the growing darkness of the approaching storm began in earnest that the Doctor squeezed Rose's hand and drew her back toward the ship.

She turned away from the breath-taking scene and leaned into him as they walked, offering him a cheeky grin. Jerking her chin in the direction of the TARDIS, she asked, "So, you gonna teach me how to fly tha' thing?"

* * *

TBC


	5. Chapter Four: Birds of a Feather

_**The Shortest Life**_

_**by ErtheChilde**_

* * *

"_Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change."_

_- Thomas Hardy_

* * *

**AN**: This chapter was written from the premise that there were a few speedbumps for the Doctor and Rose to overcome before they got the hang of travelling together...It takes place between Unquiet Dead and the short story _Doctor vs Doctor._

* * *

**FOUR**

As Charles Dickens' bemused face faded from the monitor, Rose felt her own smile begin to slip as well. The adrenaline of the evening was already wearing off.

Where moments before she had felt energetic and unbeatable, now she was beginning to feel the onset of the shakes. She knew it was a symptom of her brain coming to terms with the fact that she had almost died – again.

It was a feeling she suspected was going to become increasingly familiar.

The Doctor was still looking ridiculously pleased. To him, this was obviously the completion of yet another escapade. Everything had turned out all right and now was the time to leave without looking back.

Time to move on to the next adventure.

He turned to her, raising an eyebrow expectantly. His manic grin was back, and she could already see the question forming on his lips.

"I'm gonna go get changed, yeah?" she cut him off, hoping her voice sounded bright and cheery instead of awkward. She didn't want to mention to him the growing number of butterflies fluttering around in her stomach.

Without waiting for an answer she headed back through the twisting hallways and corridors of the TARDIS to the wardrobe the Doctor had sent her to earlier.

The quick excuse would give her time to gather her composure. She didn't want her nerves to send her into another fit of temper, as had happened back on Platform One; worse, she might unintentionally channel her mother and then he would definitely bring her home. She didn't want him to know just how shaken she was from this latest adventure.

Not that she wasn't perfectly justified in being shaken, because seriously, _zombies_.

And alright, they were dead bodies possessed by gaseous aliens and not real zombies, but it was still like something out of the _Twilight Zone_. More so than her usual experiences, anyhow.

Somehow, aliens were easy to accept, but zombies?

She strode into the wardrobe room, once again amazed by the sheer size of the place. She was only just getting used to the idea of the TARDIS being bigger on the inside, but this room still wowed her.

The huge spiral staircase in the centre seemed to grow out of the floor like a tree, with twists of clothing racks bordering it on all sides. She climbed up to the section where she had found an entire collection of gowns from various eras and was surprised to find her usual clothes had been folded up neatly beside it. She remembered practically jumping out of them when she found the gown she now wore, and had the sudden suspicion that the TARDIS had picked up after her.

"Er, thanks," she spoke hesitantly to the towering walls, half expecting to hear a disembodied voice answer her back. When she didn't hear anything besides the constant background hum, she set about undoing the fastenings of the gown.

She was careful not to rip the material or damage the dress in any way. The gown was something that she would never have been able to afford back home, even when she was working at Henricks. Even with her employee discount.

She wished she had gotten a chance to get a picture of herself in it to show her mates when she got home. Not that she'd be able to tell them why she'd been wearing it – or where it had been taken, or who she had met while wearing it.

She sighed heavily.

Rose was by nature a talkative, social person. Meeting new people had always been one of her favourite things to do, and it was an obvious high point of travelling with the Doctor; getting to know famous people like Charles Dickens or even ordinary folk like Gwyneth was an added bonus. And as much as she liked the Doctor, it had been nice – for a few minutes, at least – to swap stories with a girl her age.

A girl her age who also came from a less than posh upbringing, who knew what it was like to have to work day in at a less than stellar job for barely any money.

Alien or not, the Doctor was obviously educated; Rose might not know anything about his world, but obviously he had had opportunities in his long life that she would never have dreamed off on the estates. Gwyneth had been someone she could relate to.

Sure, the vision thing had been a bit scary – especially when Gwyneth had looked at her like she was some kind of monster – but Rose had still really liked her.

She shivered as she shimmied out of the taffeta and silk, the gesture not just caused by the cool air against her skin so much as the faraway, chilling light in the servant girl's eyes.

Rose had never been one to believe in fortune telling, but after the events in Cardiff, she couldn't help feeling the heavy, barbed sense of worry form in the pit of her stomach. Like maybe Gwyneth had seen something horrible in her future.

'She definitely knew about the past,' Rose thought with another shiver, reaching for a coat hanger.

Gwenyth's inexplicable awareness on how she had been thinking of her father since the first trip with the Doctor was unsettling. Not just because she knew about it, but because of her timing in bringing it up. It hadn't been half a minute that she'd mentioned it before the Doctor had poked his head into the room, making Rose wonder if he had heard that part of the conversation.

She wasn't ready to talk about her father with the Doctor.

Unlike what Gwyneth had implied, she hadn't told him what had happened to Pete Tyler.

Being an observant man – alien – the Doctor would no doubt have noticed that it was only Rose and her mother living on the estate. For whatever reason he hadn't remarked on it; either he didn't care – which was entirely likely – or he was familiar enough with loss that he knew not to pry.

'I think it's a bit of both,' she mused as she pulled on her jeans.

Either way, she didn't want to admit to him that the minute he had mentioned time travel her thoughts had flown to her father. She didn't want the Doctor to think she was using him, because she wasn't – she genuinely wanted to see as much of the universe as she possibly could.

But the notion of maybe one day meeting the man who'd died before she was old enough to call him 'Dad' was one which wouldn't leave her alone.

At this point, though, she wasn't even sure it would be a good idea.

What if Pete Tyler didn't live up to the stories that Jackie had always told of him? Or worse, what if he was even more wonderful and Rose had to lose him all over again? Best leave it alone, if that might be the case…

But really, it was far too early to be getting ahead of herself, time travel or not.

Especially as she wasn't sure if she was going to keep travelling with the Doctor.

Not with how things were going. Not if she was going to keep making friends only to lose them.

Charles Dickens, who would be dead within the year. Gwyneth, sacrificing herself to save them all. Raffalo…

Rose still wasn't sure what had happened to Raffalo. They hadn't been able to find her after the events of Platform One, and a niggling suspicion had told her that anyone who was missing from the satellite hadn't lived through the disaster.

'Is this what it's going to be? Meeting people and then losing them?' She peered at herself in the mirror that was positioned beside one of the large coral struts, noting how pale she looked in the lighting. 'Is that what things are like for the Doctor?'

If so, it explained a lot about why he kept his distance.

And why he didn't seem to care about insignificant humans who wanted to sacrifice themselves for matters they didn't understand.

Rose scowled, knowing she was being a little unfair in the interpretation, but also still angry at how the Doctor had practically egged Gwyneth on to form that link with the Gelth. Even after Rose had tried to tell him it wasn't a good idea, he had ignored her. Why? Because he was a higher life form and what would she know, being a stupid human?

"Get used to it or go home," he'd said.

He had been right, to an extent.

She did need to let go of her preconceived notions. She knew that. The past and future were different worlds, and no doubt she would come face to face with many different ideas and norms if she kept travelling with him.

But Rose had been right, too!

She had had a feeling deep in her gut that something wasn't right about the whole situation, and he had ignored it. That ignorance had gotten Sneed and Gwyneth killed, and her and the Doctor nearly done in as well.

If so…she could always go back out there right now and tell him she had made a mistake. He had told her point blank that if they didn't suit he could just drop her back at home and no one would notice.

'But do I want to?' she wondered, pulling her grey top over her head.

For whatever reason, the idea of telling him she wanted to go home was more gut-wrenchingly terrifying than anything she could possibly face while travelling with him. Even as she tried to picture what she would do if he brought her home, she found she couldn't – she couldn't see anything in the future without his daft face popping up, eyes sparkling and grin wide.

'It's been barely more than a day – what's wrong with me?' she scolded herself, and then blinked as her mind went over those words again.

Ah, perhaps that was it. Maybe she was tired.

More than a day without sleep, no wonder she was loopy and not thinking straight. Maybe once she got some sleep, all of this would make more sense to her.

Nodding to herself, mind made up, Rose zipped up her hoodie and headed back to the control room. It wouldn't hurt to ask the Doctor whether there was somewhere on the ship for a quick kip.

She would deal with everything else after that.

~*~ΘΣ~*~

"Whatchoo doin'?"

The Doctor started, hastily closing down the window on the console monitor where he had been programming Rose's mobile number into the TARDIS information database.

Just in case.

"Nothing," he told her, noting that she was once more clad in the baggy trappings of twenty-first century casual. He tried to ignore the part of him that was disappointed about that.

She had caught him off-guard when she first strode into the control room in that gown. Granted, he had been the one to tell her to change, but he hadn't expected her to pull off the look quite so well. More than that, he hadn't expected to notice.

Of course he had known, in an abstract way, when they first met that she wasn't an unfortunate looking humanoid – and he didn't just think so because her species resembled his, either.

She had all the requisite facial quirks that humans found attractive – full lips, almond shaped eyes, well-formed nose – despite the caked on makeup and bangles of jewellery. Her body type suggested she was athletic or had been once, and her complexion was that of someone born and raised in a maritime climate.

Still, seeing her in period garb, the gown fitting snugly against her body in such a way as to emphasize the feminine curves that had so far been hidden beneath baggy jeans and sweaters had him blurting out his thoughts before his reason caught up with him.

In fact, if he wasn't positive that his eighth incarnation was buried down deep beneath layers of post-traumatic stress and guilt, he might have suspected him to be the culprit who uttered the words.

He'd managed to cover it up with a qualifier, but that didn't cancel out the fact that he had noticed. And the fact that he was noticing anyone – least of all a twenty-first century shop girl – in any other way than with distant and intellectual curiosity was a bit troublesome.

It would have been unheard of before, but now it was just unfathomable.

"Well, I don' believe that for a minute," Rose commented lightly, one eyebrow pointedly arched.

"If you must know, I've just landed us on our next stop," he told her smugly.

Which was pretty much the truth.

He had been a little nonplussed at her sudden disappearance after they left Cardiff, but when she had announced her intention to change he had decided to spend the time keying in the next destination.

It had only been boredom that had led him to start inputting Rose's contact information into the TARDIS system after that, nothing else.

"Figured you'd want to see some more aliens, so we're on Velopssi," he went on. "It's a forest planet, about sixty-one thousand years before your time. The dominant species are avians – known as the feathered people by some. Rather quirky lot, but not terrible if you respect their customs. They're always curious about visitors, as long as you don't try to move in on their territory or try to subvert their customs. Very traditional species, Velopssians…"

"Tha' sounds great," Rose said, yet he detected a cautious note in her voice.

"But?" he prompted.

"But I'd sor' of like a break," she told him quietly. "I haven' slept in over a day. B'sides, I really want to investigate the ship a bit more. And the wardrobe."

"Sleep and clothes," he snorted contemptuously. He was more than a little affronted that she wasn't jumping at the chance to visit their latest stop. "As if you lot don't waste enough of your time unconscious in your dreary little lives. You want to miss out on the excitement of a new world just to get you beauty sleep?"

"Tha's got nothing to do wif it!" Rose protested. "I want to see Velocity –"

"Velopssi."

"– but I'd like to be properly rested if we're gonna have to run for our lives again soon."

"Who says we're gonna need to run for our lives?"

"How about every place we've been since I met you?"

"Mount Everest?" he reminded her.

"Fine – every second place we've been since I met you, we have to run for our lives," she corrected.

"Well, then by that logic and the laws of probability, this next stop should be tame," he pointed out.

She gave him a look that suggested she wasn't impressed by that reasoning, and he crossed his arms in response.

He didn't want to admit to it out loud, but he had been thinking on the subject of Rose's possible lodgings ever since she came on board. He felt a bit foolish for his reticence on the matter, but on the other hand he hadn't wanted to get anything prepared for her in case she decided not to stay after all.

"From what I've seen, there's nothing tame about travelling with you," she pointed out, teasing but with an edge of insinuation in her voice that his defensive mind interpreted as criticism.

"Well, you wouldn't still be here if you didn't enjoy that part of it," he sniffed. "Or is it now that you've seen that things don't always work out perfect, you're worried? Craving your beans on toast already, then?"

He was aware that he was being a bit unfair, but her easy acceptance of everything up until this point was beginning to worry him. He had never travelled with someone who had just…accepted his life for what it was. She had been taking everything in stride so far, not falling apart at yet another adventure that had nearly ended in her death or becoming inconsolable in light of the Welsh girl's death. He hadn't gotten the sense that she was indifferent to it, just shocked and looking to him for her cues – an idea which horrified him. If he had to make her angry to ensure she wasn't going to bottle things up, he'd do it.

Right now, she was frowning at him, which suggested that at least was working.

"Of course not. Where'd you get that idea?" she wanted to know, and then a look passed over her face like something had just occurred to her. "You been gettin' your ship to look in my head?"

"Why would I do that? Could do it myself, if I wanted," he pointed out, defensive and somewhat hurt. He'd only made a guess based on his own insecurities, but her words hit him like a jab of ice to the hearts. Had she really been thinking that?

Not that he would have a chance to find out, because by the sudden whiteness of her face and flash of anger in her eyes, he realized he had said the wrong thing. He had completely forgotten about her aversion to telepathy.

The sudden need to backtrack was a completely foreign one, but strong enough that he grumbled, "Not like I need to. It's practically all over your face."

"And when were you gonna tell me that?" she demanded, ignoring that. "You couldn' have mentioned this when I was asking you abou' wha' makes you differen' from humans?"

"I told you I had better senses – that's one of 'em."

"Tha's not a sense, it's a…" she trailed off, her hands clenching into fists. "So is tha' wha' it's gonna be like? You and your ship poking about in my head?" An unpleasant idea appeared to occur to her then. "How do I know you didn' just put the idea into my head to make me travel with you?"

"As if I'd waste the time on a stubborn ape brain," he shot back, trying to cover up how much her insinuation hurt him. He hadn't forced anyone to travel with him in centuries, and a hard learned lesson that had been. "Wouldn' even be an effort, that."

"You trying to say something?" she challenged, brown eyes flashing.

He rolled his eyes. "Of course, you'd take that personal. Never mind that I'm just stating a fact. Human minds are infinitely less complex than some species I've met." He shook his head, scoffing in annoyance. "This what I have to look forward to? Paranoid conspiracy theories from a South East bint that's barely set two foot outside the door?"

He knew immediately that he'd once again said the wrong thing.

Rose's jaw dropped and he didn't need any telepathic ability to know that his barb had managed to hit its target. Anger and hurt and disbelief was coming off her in waves, and for a moment he thought he was about to have the full blast of the temper she had unleashed on Sneed directed at him.

Instead, she fixed him with an icy look that made his stomach pull tight in guilt.

"Fine," she snapped. "How's this for setting foot outside the door?"

And before he could open his mouth to protest or try to salvage the situation or even – Rassilon forbid! – _apologize_, she had turned on her heel and stalked out of the control room, slamming the police box door shut on her way out of the TARDIS.

For a long moment, his common sense faltered.

'What the hell just happened?' he thought as the TARDIS hummed reproachfully.

He wasn't sure at what point in the conversation things had delineated from teasing banter to an earnest row. Not that he was a stranger to disagreeing with companions, but generally he knew he was in the right.

This time, he knew for a fact he wasn't.

He didn't need the TARDIS's chiding hum to tell him he had been out of line or that he needed to fix things. He couldn't have Rose leave.

She had said this life was 'better with two', and she was right – she just didn't know how particular he was about the other half of that 'two.' He had travelled long enough to know that even in the constant company of others, if they weren't kindred spirits, life could be worse than being alone.

And inexplicably, she was a kindred spirit. More than. She was clever and adapted easily, and forgave him the idiosyncrasies he knew other companions would have derided or despaired of.

There was something about the way he felt around her that he hadn't experienced since he was a boy.

It was this that kept catching him off balance and what he suspected had caused him to provoke the row in the first place. Because after everything he had done, he didn't deserve to have even a hint of that anymore.

That much was obvious considering how he had handled their most recent visit. If he hadn't been such a weak coward, if he had used his time sense instead of relying on a Time Lord superiority complex, perhaps Gwyneth wouldn't have died; he hadn't even considered looking into the timelines because of the pain involved.

Too desperate and guilty about the victims of the Time War, he had allowed himself to be taken in by the Gelth when they appealed to his better nature. He wanted, just once, to be able to save a dying species instead of complete its extinction, to fix something instead of breaking it. With the way time had been cut loose since the War, he had thought it would be safe enough to alter this timeline – after all, nothing was safe since he flipped the switch, and if anyone had a say in changing reality, wouldn't it be him? The last of his kind?

Not according to Rose, at any rate; he wondered if maybe she wasn't the wiser of the two of them. She had questioned him, tried to tell him that something was wrong and he had ignored her. She had trusted him and he had let her down and all but brought her into a stone crypt to die.

In what he thought were his final moments, he hadn't thought of Gallifrey or joining his people in death. His only thought had been to save Rose.

And the impossible little ape had looked at him and forgiven him!

Told him she wanted to come with him, absolved him of guilt in her impending death and then told him they would go down fighting. He could still feel the strong grip of her hand, remembered the smile of shared understanding.

Something had happened to him in that moment. Even though he had always feared death, had always been the coward, even during those dark moments before he used the Moment, gazing into Rose Tyler's eyes he had realized that the possibility of dying with her by his size made him brave.

It had made the betrayal in her eyes – both when he escaped the morgue without Gwyneth and then just now when he implied she was simple – hurt him all the more.

He didn't spare another second, vaulting toward the TARDIS door.

He had to stop her from wandering too far before she got into trouble.

Of course, the Doctor had reckoned without understanding the speed of a furious woman's gait, and when he exited the ship, he saw with sinking hearts that Rose was nowhere in sight.

ΘΣ

If Rose had not been thinking up several creative insults towards the crotchety, alien designated driver that she had attached herself too, she likely would have paid more attention to her surroundings upon exiting the TARDIS.

Had that been the case, she would have still been standing outside the police box, gobsmacked at the sight of her first foreign planet.

As it was, it was only after ten minutes and a kilometre of stomping through foliage and vines that brain caught up with the fact that not only was she on an alien planet, she was on an alien planet completely alone.

At which point she came to an abrupt stop and simply stared out at the new world around her.

The ground she was standing on was mossy and hard, and it took her the better part of a moment to realize she was standing on a giant tree branch on an even larger tree in a forest that seemed to encompass the entire area. From what she could see, every tree stretched for kilometres in either direction. In the distance she could see mountains, but these too were dwarfed by the enormous trees.

The giant branches were all connected together in a kind of network that reminded her of overpasses and underpasses, yet there was no discernible traffic. She could, however, make out buildings; every few kilometres there appeared to be a cluster of edifices that grew out of or were built into the woodwork of the giant trees.

Despite the size of the trees, enough natural light filtered down through the treetops to illuminate the clusters of buildings in a comforting green glow. They were shaped roughly like bungalows and made of every manner of wood and reed nearby.

The damp smell of forest and rain hit her at the same time as the realization that she was no longer anywhere near Earth.

"Toto, I've a feeling we're no' in Kansas anymore," she murmured to herself, a half-hysterical giggle escaping her throat.

A sudden stab of fear lanced through her.

She knew absolutely nothing about the world she had just plodded into.

For a moment she was tempted to turn back to the TARDIS and wait for the Doctor, but the memory of his sharp words halted her.

On the coattails of that thought was her own mean-spirited insinuations; row or not, she probably shouldn't have implied he had forced her to come with him. They both knew that she had wanted to come with him even before he had asked the first time.

She'd have to go back and apologize eventually. But what if upon returning he decided she was too emotional or immature and that he should just take her home? He'd do it, she knew, and she didn't want to return to the estates just yet.

On the other hand, what if decide he was well shot of her after their argument and he left her on this strange planet?

'He wouldn't,' she thought firmly, something innate telling her so.

He might bring her home, but he would never strand her on an alien planet. The Doctor might be a git, but she trusted him. Her common sense was rebelling against that, but her heart seemed in agreement and so she shrugged off the idea of being left behind.

Besides, the draw of the unknown planet was too much to resist. And there was a very small part of her that was glad he wasn't with her right then – that she could experience this first on her own without him watching her reactions. She'd felt a little too much like a child or a rat in a lab that first trip to the future the way he had watched her react to the aliens on Platform One. This, right now, was just for her.

Remembering what the Doctor had said about the people here being friendly, Rose wandered in the direction of the nearest cluster of what she supposed were domiciles. As she got closer, she realized that the shape of the buildings weren't square like houses on earth but rounder and more in resemblance of very large bird nests.

Beyond the houses was a large open space cleared of foliage and moss but made up of a rushing throng of people and activity. She needed no explanation for what this was, recognizing a market place even on an alien planet. The only real difference in it was the people running it.

The – Velopssians, she supposed – were humanoid, but that was the only thing they seemed to have in common with Rose. As the Doctor had implied, instead of skin the locals were covered from head to toe in feathers. Although they didn't have wings, their fingers were webbed and ended in black talons. They didn't appear to have noses, but some kind of horned protrusion above nostrils and their tiny, toothless mouths. As she wandered by, she felt yellow and orange eyes following her progress, yet she didn't get the sense of impending threat and supposed she was simply garnering curiosity for being a stranger.

And oh, did she feel out of place right now!

In addition to her lack of feathers, her clothes and hair obviously marked her as alien. Not the only one – she could see a few other creatures that were not Velopssian wandering through the market as well – but alien all the same.

'And how odd is it that _I'm_ the alien here?' she thought as she tried not to stare at a group – flock? – of Velopssians converged by an in-progress structure nearby. They were females, Rose decided as she took in the familiar anatomy and the way they were dressed.

There appeared to be a great difference in clothing between the two sexes. The women wore barely more than threadbare loincloths and breast bands that made even Rose, who had grown up in the era a tube tops and miniskirts, feel naked by proxy. Despite their ostensibly humble clothing, the women conveyed a sense of pride and ostentation. They wore their hair – at least that's what Rose decided to call the overlong feathery protrusions from their scalps – arranged into elaborate styles peppered with glittering jewels and flowers.

The men, on the other hand, wore their hair shorn into downy fluff; their clothing was much richer looking, and gaudier. Doublets and trousers of every colour Rose ever had seen made her blink in amazement.

'Well, definitely something to get used to,' she decided, somewhat nonplussed at the sight but able to cautiously appreciate it as long as she kept reminding herself that on this world it was considered normal to look like that.

The Doctor's admonition to get used to difference notions and different ways of looking at things echoed over and over in her head. She wondered, if she kept travelling with him, if she would get used to the sights of different places and different people the Doctor showed her. A part of her hoped not, while the other part hoped she'd at least stop feeling so surprised at the differences she saw.

'Then again,' she thought as she considered a pair of male Velopssians wandering by, chattering over some kind of sport or other while a gaggle of girls her age watched and giggled amongst themselves, 'it's a bit of a relief that some things are at least don't change.'

For a moment she considered the idea of going over to the girls and introducing herself. After all, what was the point of travelling the universe if she wasn't going to meet new people?

Of course, the last few people she had befriended had died or were doomed to die. Maybe it was better not to bother.

'Besides, it's not like I could really take part in that conversation,' she thought sadly. 'Feathered, toothless aliens just don't do it for me.'

That train of thought once again had her thinking about Gwyneth and their light-hearted conversation before the whole night went to hell.

"Good smile, nice bum," she'd told the Welsh girl, trying very hard not to let her mind flash to the Doctor as she said it. Now that she knew Gwyneth had probably been able to hear that errant thought, she felt even more embarrassed, even though she hadn't really been looking in earnest.

'It was an objective observation,' she told herself defensively. 'A bit like when you notice a decent looking bloke on the Tube but have no intention of actually talking to him.'

Besides, he was a git. And daft looking. And probably old enough to be her father. And alien.

She frowned at how she had internally prioritized that list, and then shook her head to clear it. None of that mattered, because she and the Doctor weren't like that or ever going to be like that. Just because she was still technically a teenager didn't mean she had to get all flustered over a man paying attention to her and bringing her to see the world. Theirs was strictly a friendship based on wanting to see the universe, because Rose lived in unholy terror of never getting out of the Powell Estates.

Gwyneth had implied as much when she accused her of being wild. Rose had been quite serious when she said it was maybe a good thing. In her heart, she didn't believe she had any business sitting home, safe and docile, when she could be out getting into trouble and adventure.

Preferably with the Doctor, seeing as how he generally seemed to know how to get out of it again.

Of course, from what she had seen, he was the cause of a lot of that same trouble and adventure.

Another flare of anger bubbled up within her at the thought of the last bit of trouble he had caused and she violently shoved her hands into her jeans' pockets. She might be a 'southeast bint who barely set two foot outside the door', but one of the first lessons she'd learned growing up on the estate was not to talk to strangers. More than that, it was definitely not to listen to them either.

And if the Gelth hadn't been strangers, Rose didn't know what they were.

But no, the mighty Time Lord had just decided not only to accept their story but the fact that their presence could change the world. Even if the Gelth hadn't turned out to be murderous gas being and really had been survivors of the Doctor's war, that didn't mean he could have known what would happen once they came through.

He'd said things could be erased, and thinking on it now, Rose felt a stab of fear replace her anger. Had the situation with the Gelth not turned out the way it had, would it have meant all of history changed? Would she and the Doctor never have met? How did that even work?

'Would he even care?' she couldn't help wondering.

He'd been callous since they started travelling together, always walking away from her rather than engaging, and using sarcasm to forestall any prying questions. Everything about him screamed 'back off'.

And he obviously didn't like it when people disagreed with him. That was downright obvious when she'd objected to letting the Gelth take over the bodies of human dead, and then when she'd tried to convince him to leave Gwyneth alone. He'd gotten huffy, Gwyneth had gotten understandably, if not unintentionally, insulted, and Sneed had gotten his neck snapped.

But then in that dank basement he had seemed so genuine when he told her he was happy to have met her. The way he had looked at her made her think that underneath all the prickle there had to be a decent bloke…

'Well, of course he's a decent bloke,' she rolled her eyes at that thought. 'If he weren't, I never would have said 'yes' when he asked me to come with him.'

Still, her own character judgements aside, it wasn't two days and she'd already had him lose his temper at her.

She'd been in this kind of situation before, with Jimmy. That entire travesty of a relationship had been filled with her head telling her to get out, and she'd ignored it over her heart. She was lucky the whole affair hadn't ended worse.

What if that happened again? And with the Doctor, Rose had a feeling she could end up with worse than a black eye and ₤800 of debt.

"This is ridiculous," she muttered to herself. "One's got nothing to do with the other." She blinked at the sound of her voice and groaned, "And now, on top of everything else, I'm talking to myself. All because of a bloody insensitive alien!"

Well, she wasn't going to spare him another thought from now on. If this was to be her last stop before he decided to bring her home, she was going to commit all of it to memory so that when she was back to meaningless life on the estates, she could remember everything.

'And isn't that a depressing thought,' she mused as she wandered around the various market stalls. Aliens – 'People,' she reminded herself firmly – milled about all around her, passing through the many tables, booths and burlap-like tents that housed difference crafters and their wares. The stalls were mostly run by younger people, adolescents and teens, which she thought was strange until she reasoned that perhaps they didn't have to go to school here.

All over, strange foods and fruits were being sold. Variations of the segregated clothing items, goods carved out of rock and woven from grass; everything here was made of primitive materials but still managed to look polished.

She paused by one of the tents, staring at the elaborate hair ornaments that were woven into elaborate designs and set with brilliant gems. The hair pieces were the only form of jewellery she could see. She supposed that made sense – after all, a ring or a necklace would be less than practical to a species with webbed fingers and covered in feathers.

She wished she could buy a trinket as a souvenir, but she didn't know what passed for the local currency and she doubted her wallet full of British pound notes would suffice.

Resigning herself to the fact that all she would retain of her stop to an alien planet was her memory, she drank in the sights and sounds and smells around her, committing them to memory.

For a while Rose simply lost herself in the throngs of people, pretending she was just any other shopper with the ease of someone who had spend a good part of their youth navigating crowded malls in London. But she realized that every time she saw something amazing and wanted to point it out, there was no one beside her to appreciate it or explain it to her.

Knowing that despite being angry with him she still wished the Doctor was with her put a bit of a dampener on the rest of the afternoon, especially as she was beginning to worry that maybe he had left her after all.

At that point, her resolve wavered and she decided to head back to the TARDIS, just to make sure it was still there.

Of course, it was also about then that she realized that she had become dreadfully turned around in the bustling avian marketplace and had no idea where she had come in from.

'Great,' she thought moodily as she headed for the edge of the market to see if she couldn't regain her bearings from outside of the daily commotion. 'Wonderful job – stalk off in a high dudgeon and get lost in an alien marketplace.'

She ended up standing in a small alcove of space that that for some reason reminded her of the playground on the estate back home. It was little more than a green patch of moss grass and some oddly shaped wooden growths, but she supposed it would do for somewhere to sit a spell. Maybe if she stayed put until the market drained a bit she could find her way back.

Of course, that was when she realized that she wasn't alone.

There was a soft humming coming from beyond the growths, and giving in to her curiosity, Rose followed it. A little ways beyond the copse, practically hidden by an overhang of vines and lianas, Rose stumbled upon a lone Velopssian.

It was a female – a girl, from what Rose could tell from her figure and the simple clothing; possible one who was her age or younger. The feathered alien was crouched over a book of what looked like treebark, making etching movements with something like charcoal while she hummed softly.

She was so focused on her work that she didn't notice Rose cautiously approach and peek over her shoulder at her drawing.

Some kind of snarling, canine looking beast was rendered there in amazing detail and Rose couldn't stop herself from remarking, "Tha's amazing."

The girl let out a squawk of surprise and jumped, her sketchbook going flying as she backed away from Rose in what looked like terror and resignation. The feathers around her neck began to puff up in something like agitation.

Rose put out her hands in a pacifying gesture, "Oh, no, don't! I didn't mean to scare you! I just…I'm a little lost, and then I saw you, and I…" Seeing that the strange girl was still holding herself extremely tense, Rose offered a hesitant, "I'm Rose. What's your name?"

The girl blinked at her warily, looking her up and down once, and then in a deadpan that didn't quite fit her shrill voice, stated, "You're a girl."

"Er…yeah?" Rose said, somewhat caught off guard, and glanced down at her baggy jeans and hoodie. "Is tha' a problem?"

"No," the girl said, still sounding suspicious. "You don't dress like a girl. And I can never tell with you aliens."

Rose laughed at that. "I s'pose you're at least used to it. Lots of aliens come here, I guess?"

"Enough," the girl answered. "Not as much as the lower cities, though."

"Well, I'm sorry I scared you," Rose offered, crouching down to pick up the abandoned sketchbook and hand it over to the other girl; she noticed that the alien was very careful not to touch her hand as she did so.

"You didn't scare me," came the instant reply, a warning tone that Rose recognized as someone not wanting to talk about the subject. "I just thought you were…someone I didn't want to see."

'And that's my cue to change the subject,' Rose decided as the other girl searched for her charcoal stick. "My mistake…"

"Chi'Ko'ba."

"What?"

"My name," the girl said. "You asked before. I'm Chi'Ko'ba." At least that was the approximation that Rose could make of the chirping, trilling syllables the girl offered her. As though sensing her thoughts, the feathered girl went on, "But you can call me Chi, I know you aliens tend to have trouble with our names."

The statement was blunt, but with truth and not intentional rudeness.

"What were you drawing?" Rose asked, tilting her head to take in the image once more.

"It's the Okpulonashoba," Chi said. "It's a monster that's said to live down in the deeps, down in the roots of the trees." She shrugged. "At least, that's what the miners say it looks like. I've never been down farther than a branch or two, and only to visit family."

"Looks a bit like something we have on my planet," Rose said. "We call them wolves. In fact, if you hadn't told me it was something else, that's what I would have thought it was. You're really good at drawing."

Chi ducked her head in something like embarrassment. "Thanks."

"Are you an artist, then? Have you got a stall where you sell your work? I'd love to see anything else you've done."

This time the feathered-girl's shrug was more ashamed. "Oh, well, no…I'm not supposed to be making pictures at all, unless they're construction sketches." Her eyes widened. "You won't tell anyone, will you? I'd get into trouble."

"In trouble for drawing?" Rose raised an eyebrow.

"I'm meant to become an architect, like the other women of my caste," Chi explained.

"An architect…like building things?"

"Yes. Our people move around every season," Chi explained. "That always requires new houses. And with the men in the mines all the time, who else is going to do it?"

Her tone of voice was dull, like she was reciting a mantra she had been forced to learn.

"But if all the women in your caste are architects, it doesn't look like there'd be a shortage any time soon," Rose pointed out. "You're really good – you could make some decent money selling portraits like that. I know street artists back home who keep a flat in the middle of London on what they make, and there work isn't half as good as yours."

"Thanks you…I think," Chi said, "but it's either become an architect or get married now that I've had my first blood." She clenched a fist. "I would never be able to draw anything ever again if I was married, especially to someone like…well." She set her shoulders. "I have to be an architect."

There was a dull acceptance there that Rose recognized as the same defeatism she had felt for much of her life.

"No, you don't," she told her. "You could leave, couldn't you? Go somewhere where you can do whatever you want."

"Only if I were married," Chi said, miserable. "And what lifemate would wish to leave home just so that I could draw?"

"So go alone."

Chi stared at her in shock. "Unmarried women who travel alone can be sold into slavery. As much as I'd hate it, I'd prefer marriage."

Rose could tell this wasn't a problem that had an easy answer, especially given the fact she had no idea about the local customs. Perhaps if the Doctor had been around they would have been able to come up with a better solution, but for now she simply decided once again that a subject change was in order.

"Wish I could draw like that," Rose remarked, nodding down at the sketchbook. "Never was that artsy."

"I could show you, if you want –"

"Look what we have here!" an exultant, trilling crow sounded from the path to the copse; Rose and Chi both stared up in surprise as a gaggle of young men appeared. The foremost was one dressed in burgundy robes that put Rose in mind of a bathrobe, but which she supposed was the height of male fashion here.

"Oh, no," Chi murmured quietly, and Rose noticed her shoulders curve in on herself.

"So, this is where you disappear to when you're supposed to be at your lessons, hey, Chi'Ko'ba?" the male in burgundy leered, his yellow eyes flashing something like triumph. Rose noticed that he barely looked at Rose, like she didn't register to him the way Chi did. "If I had known that, we could have finished with this months ago."

"Go away, Tane," Chi muttered, looking to their left and right. "I already told you 'no'."

"And I respected it because you were lawfully protected," he told her smoothly. "But you're all alone, without a proper escort. It's my duty to bring you home to your parents – and you know what that means."

He advanced on her, and Rose heard Chi let out a defeated sound in her throat.

Instinct and nineteen years of estate living had her moving in an instant.

"You can step off, mate," she told him pointedly, planting herself in front of Chi. "She don't want to go with you."

Tane blinked, and his guffawing friends went a little silent at the sudden development. A moment later, he snorted. "You don't understand our ways, outsider. It would be best for you to leave us."

"No, it'd be best for _you_ to leave us," Rose shot back. "Especially if you intend to have kids any time soon."

Tane scoffed and grabbed hold of Rose, making a motion to shove her away. Rose reacted as any self-respecting girl from the south east would, jerking her knee up into his crotch area and hoping these aliens were close enough to human blokes that it had any effect.

It did.

Tane dropped like a sack of bricks.

In the split-second where his mates stared in shock, Rose clutched Chi's hand and yanked at her to follow her.

"Run!" she ordered, ignoring the look of shock on the other girl's face.

* * *

This was originally going to be longer, but I have midterms to study for and you guys have already waited a week.

Reviews would be appreciated.

TBC


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